I've been trying to follow up on "Mustafa al-Muzfar" relative to the uncle.
I'm coming up with some interesting hits on Al-Muzaffar.
Chandra Muzaffar, Malaysia.Nothing tied out yet and I'll be gone for a couple days so I won't be able to follow up.
President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
http://www.just-international.orgSami al-Muzaffar
Prior dean of the University of Baghdad
Dismissed from position after refusing to abide by an Iraqi Governing Council decision to exclude senior Ba'athists from the university's teaching and administrative staff (Sep 2003)Lieutenant General Mahmud Al-Muzaffar
Appointed “scientific counselor” at the Iraqi embassy in Belgrade in 1997
(Interesting Milosevic connections and alleged Iranian-Iraqi oil smuggling deals)
I presume the man above is the same as the "Sami Mahdi Al-Mudafer" described in the article below.
This heavily-redacted article from the bird-cage liner LASlimes is not for commercial use.
It is solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Los Angeles Times
May 18, 2003 Sunday
Faculty's Lesson in Democracy: Picking a University President
Tyler Marshall, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD
It was back-to-school day at colleges and universities throughout Iraq on Saturday, but at Baghdad University, faculty members made a brief but important detour on the way to their classrooms.
They practiced democracy.
For the first time in the memory of even the most venerable professors, the faculty had been granted the right to vote for the university's president plus two senior deputies. And in oven-like heat they crowded into a stifling auditorium to do what comes naturally to any American: nominate candidates, listen to them speak, bicker over procedure, challenge rules and -- eventually -- cast their ballots.
Before it was over, the 500-plus voters had selected Sami Mahdi Al-Mudafer, a Basra-born chemistry professor.
(snip)
When organizers opened the floor to nominations, hands shot up immediately and within minutes there were 11 nominees. All were men. After the names were written for all to see, each candidate addressed the audience with a description of his past.
A computer scientist named Hilal Bayati told his colleagues that he had been jailed by the Hussein regime for more than a decade and that he and his family had been tortured.
Most focused on their academic histories and ended with statements that they had never been affiliated with the Baath Party. A candidate who declared that he had "retired" from the party was the only one to receive no applause after his remarks.
The silence was but one sign of anti-Baath sentiment in an institution where party membership was a prerequisite for senior positions a few months ago. Outside the auditorium, placards urged faculty members to vote against any Baath candidates.
U.S. civil authorities banned high-level Baath members from public life Friday; those who had served in the party's lower ranks were free to participate.
As faculty members ascended stairs toward the auditorium, they passed haunting photos of about 40 young people who disappeared during Hussein's rule.
Some of those in the auditorium had also been shocked by an incident last week , when U.S. authorities were forced to cancel their first attempt to conduct the election because of irregularities, including identification checks that allowed many ineligible voters into the auditorium and several Baath Party figures seemingly in charge.
With squares of white paper serving as ballots, each candidate Saturday was allotted just two minutes to introduce himself, and with votes counted on a blackboard, the event seemed more akin to a student council election than a vote for the head of country's largest university.
(snip)