Iraqi politician whose co-operation with the American appointed Iraqi Governing Council cost him his life. Salim spent a lifetime in Iraqi exile before returning home after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003. He was in the middle of a month-long stint as acting president of Iraq's US-appointed governing council, and was, therefore, on paper at least, the most important Iraqi political figure in the country. He was a firm advocate for a bigger political role for the United Nations in the transition to independence. Salim was an intellectual and a writer who wrote historical novels, commentaries and countless newspaper and magazine articles. He joined Hizbulul-Dawa ('the Islamic Call Party') in 1961 and was later imprisoned for several years. He fled to Kuwait in 1975 and then to Tehran where he spent the next two decades. Salim was strongly identified with the Iranian revolution. In 1983, he joined the supreme council for Islamic revolution in Iraq (Sciri), the largest Tehran-based Iraqi exile group and enjoyed American backing. Abdel-Zahra Othman Muhammad, known by his nom de guerre Izzedin Salim, was born into a minor clerical family in Howeir near Basra. A suicide bomber in Baghdad assassinated him.