Malik Dohan al-Hassan

Dr. al-Hassan was born in al-Hilla, south of Baghdad, in 1919 to a Shi'a Arab family belonging to the Jubur clan, one of the largest clans in Iraq. He graduated from the University of Baghdad in 1947. He continued his studies in France where he received a Diploma in Public and Private Law from Montpellier University and a Doctorate in Law from the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He then became a Professor of Law at the University of Baghdad. He was elected President of the Al-Mustansiriya University in 1966. He authored seminal books in tort law that were taught in law schools in Iraq.

He was appointed the Minister of Culture and Information in 1967 by President Abdul Rahman Arif.^[2] He is considered the foremost authority in Iraq on tort law, authored seminal books taught in Iraqi universities.

al-Hassan was imprisoned under Saddam Hussein for 2 years, then interned in Baghdad and was prohibited from travel for ten years. He was permanently banned from practicing politics and holding public office. As a result, al-Hassan practiced private law until the end of the Ba'athist rule over Iraq in 2003. ^[3]

In 2003 he was elected to head the Iraqi Bar Association. He was appointed to a task force looking at compensation for the victims of the Saddam Hussein government. In June 2004 he was appointed as the Minister of Justice in the Iraqi Interim Government.^[3] As Minister, he was targeted by a car bomb that killed four people, including his nephew.^[4] Responsibility was claimed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq.^[5] He defended the use of the death penalty against former President Saddam Hussein, saying "...we have the right and even the obligation to use the tools that we see useful".^[6] Later that year, he threatened to resign unless a judge who had indicted Ahmad Chalabi for murder and money laundering was fired.^[7]

He had initially called for the Iraqi legislative election of January 2005 to be postponed as it could "...trigger civil war".^[8] He nonetheless took part with the National Democratic Coalition, who only received 9,747 votes. Even though he did not get elected, he remained a vocal figure in the media and was often asked for his opinion. In February 2007, he criticized the proposed Oil and Gas Law as being too vague.^[9]