Saddam Hussein’s alleged former weapons chief has been recruited as a scientist at one of Britain’s most important research facilities.
Physicist Dr Saleh Al-Atabi was a commander in the Iraqi dictator’s Ba’ath party and a ‘supervisor’ at a weapons-making facility, according to High Court papers.
The party was described in a UN Commission on Human Rights and UN General Assembly report as an ‘all-pervasive order of repression and oppression… sustained by broad-based discrimination and… terror’.
Iraq’s Military Industrialisation Committee, where Dr Al-Atabi worked for 11 years, made chemical weapons before the regime fell.
The scientist – who fled to Britain in 2006 – now works for Diamond Light Source, based in Didcot, Oxfordshire. It is funded by the Government and Wellcome Trust and conducts experiments using intense beams of light.
The 57-year-old joined the institute in May, as a ‘beamline scientist’, according to his social media. Previously, he was a scientist at Imperial College London.
Dr Al-Atabi fled here with his wife and two children three years after the 2003 US invasion which toppled Saddam.
He sought asylum claiming he would be killed if sent to Iraq, due to his Ba’ath party involvement. The application was rejected by the Home Office but he was given indefinite leave to remain in 2013 on appeal. His bid for British citizenship was opposed by two Tory home secretaries.
Physicist Dr Saleh Al-Atabi was a commander in the Iraqi dictator’s Ba’ath party and a ‘supervisor’ at a weapons-making facility, according to High Court papers
Dr Al-Atabi fled here with his wife and two children three years after the 2003 US invasion which toppled Saddam
Amber Rudd refused him citizenship in 2017 due to his ‘association with… organisations that regularly committed international crimes’.
In 2020, Priti Patel also rejected an appeal but he still has indefinite leave to remain.
Dr Al-Atabi, recently living in a £400,000 flat in Maida Vale in west London, sought a judicial review of the decision at the High Court.
A report to the court by security analyst Dr Alison Pargeter, of Cambridge University, said: ‘As a committed Ba’athist, Dr Al-Atabi would doubtless have been aware of the actions and gross human rights abuses carried out by the Saddam Hussain regime.’
In his 2006 asylum bid, the Iraqi said he was involved in the manufacture of ‘bullets, explosives, small guns, AK-47s’. But while fighting the decision to deny him UK citizenship, he said he was not involved at all but had worked at a plastics factory.
In November 2021, the High Court threw out Dr Al-Atabi’s bid for a judicial review of the Home Office decision.
A Diamond Light Source spokesman confirmed his role, adding: ‘Diamond has completed all required pre-employment and sanction checks and Dr Al-Atabi was cleared to have the right to work in the UK.’
Dr Al-Atabi was unavailable for comment.
