Ammar al-Saffar

Ammar al-Saffar (born 1956) was the Deputy Health Minister of Iraq from 2003 until his kidnapping and likely death in 2006. On November 19, 2006, he became the highest-ranking Iraqi official to be kidnapped when he was seized by men in police uniforms.

Career Since 2003, al-Saffa, a Shiite and member of the Islamic Dawa Party worked as the Deputy Health Minister of Iraq, serving under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and was noted for his open criticism of former President Saddam Hussein. In 2004, he spoke to Al Jazeera about medicine that had been looted from the Ministry of Health, and about quality control weaknesses under the previous Hussein administration.

His son, writing in Foreign Policy in 2010, reported that al-Saffa was on the brink of exposing evidence of Hussein and fellow deputy minister Hakim al-Zamili diverting funds for health towards armed militias.

Assassination attempts and abduction There was an attempts on al-Saffa's life in June 2004.

Personal life Al-Saffar spent 16 years living in exile in the United Kingdom until he returned to his home country following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.