Qais Khazali

Qais Khazali is an Iraqi Shia militia commander and the founder and secretary-general of Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous). A former student of Grand Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr, he became a senior figure in the Sadrist movement before breaking with Muqtada al-Sadr following the 2004 Shia uprising. He subsequently established his own network with support from the IRGC Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah.

From 2006, Khazali led the Iran-backed Special Groups in Iraq, serving as the primary intermediary between the IRGC Quds Force and Shia militant operations targeting US forces. He coordinated with Hezbollah adviser Ali Mussa Daqduq in planning the Karbala Provincial Headquarters Raid on 20 January 2007, in which nine to twelve militants disguised as an American security detail attacked the Karbala Joint Security Station and killed five US soldiers. US military interrogation transcripts show Khazali authorized the launch of the operation. The raid was intended to capture US soldiers and exchange them for detained IRGC personnel.

Khazali was captured by British forces in March 2007 in Basra alongside Ali Mussa Daqduq. He was released in January 2010 as part of a prisoner exchange for Peter Moore, a British IT contractor kidnapped by Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq in 2007.

After his release, Khazali rebuilt Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq into one of Iraq's most powerful Iran-aligned militias, incorporated into the Popular Mobilization Forces after 2014. The group's political wing, al-Sadiqun, holds seats in the Iraqi parliament. The US State Department designated Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on 3 January 2020, and Khazali was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) on the same date. He had previously been designated by the US Treasury in December 2019 for his role in violently suppressing Iraqi protests.