Friedman on Alousi

"In his column today, Thomas Friedman says that as long as there are people like Mithal Al-Alousi (I spell it Alusi) in Iraq then he won’t give up on the country. I often gauge the seriousness of those who support liberal democracy in Iraq and the wider Middle East by the case of Mr. Alusi.

These are the hoops that Alusi has already jumped through: he is from the Sunni Arab Alusi family of Anbar Province that gave Iraq and the Middle East some of its most prominent Sunni religious jurists of the last three centuries. He was a former Ba’athist in his youth who became Director General of the De-Ba’athification Commission upon returning to Iraq, and came to symbolize one of the country’s most ardent anti-Ba’athists. In December 2002, he organized the take-over of the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin in the name of “the Iraqi opposition” and claimed it as the first “liberated” territory of Iraq. For that, the Germans put in jail for over a year, and then under house arrest; he later broke the terms of his limited release by leaving for Iraq."
Talisman Gate