Ra’id Juhi Hamadi al-Saedi
Senior Fellow, Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program
Rule of Law | Iraq
Note: Journalists interested in interviewing Mr. al-Saedi should contact Lauren Sucher in the USIP public affairs office at 202.429.3822.
Languages: Arabic, English
Ra’id Juhi Hamadi al-Saedi (Judge Juhi) served from 2004 to 2006 as chief investigative judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT). During that time, he supervised all cases before the tribunal and indicted Saddam Hussein and seven others for crimes against humanity perpetrated against the citizens of Ad-Dujayl. Juhi also indicted Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti ("Chemical Ali") for genocide arising out of the massacre of over 100,000 Kurds from 1987-1988. During the trial of Saddam Hussein, Juhi served as the court’s spokesperson, handled all press queries, and frequently appeared before Western and Arabic media. Juhi also negotiated the IHT’s rules of evidence and procedure which were ultimately adopted and used in all proceedings. Previously, Juhi investigated and indicted radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for the murder of cleric Abdul Majid Al-Khoei, which occurred in 2003 outside one of Shiite Islam’s holiest sites, the Shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, Iraq. Juhi is a graduate of Iraq’s Judicial Institute and served as a family court judge and criminal investigative judge under Saddam Hussein. He left Iraq in May 2007 and joined Cornell University’s Law School as a Clarke Middle Eastern Fellow.
