Samir Sumaidaie

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Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumayda'ie (Samir Sumaidaie) is an Iraqi politician and the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. He was born in Baghdad in 1944 and left Iraq in 1960 to study in the United Kingdom where he obtained a degree in electrical engineering from Durham University in the in 1965 and a postgraduate diploma in 1966. He returned to Iraq in 1966 but left again for the UK in 1973 after Saddam Hussein seized power. He returned to Baghdad and was appointed member of the Iraq Governing Council in July 2003. He was appointed as Iraq's ambassador to the United States in April 2006[1], after previously serving as the Iraq's Permanent Representative Iraq's Permanent Representativeto the United Nations (from August 2004), and prior to that, as Baghdad's Interior Minister. He is secular and rejects any sectarian label. During his years of exile, based in London, and traveling in the Mid- and Far- East, He was a leading figure in the opposition to Saddam's regime and helped form a number of political groups. In July 2005 Sumaidaie demanded an inquiry into the fatal shooting (which he has described as "cold-blooded") of his cousin during a routine house to house search by US Marines in Iraq. In November 2007 he visited The Fletcher School at Tufts University where he gave an enlightening speech on the history and current situation in Iraq. His daughter, Rend Shakir, an entrepreneur based in Cambridge UK in the area of wireless mesh networking, is also a civil rights activist promoting better communication between Muslims and non Muslims in order to mobilise maximum support for fundamental freedoms and human rights.