Mohammed Abdullah al-Shahwani

Mohammed Abdullah al-Shahwani is an Iraqi general and the former director of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service.

Early life and military service Al-Shahwani is a Sunni Turkmen born in either Mosul and began his career as an international athlete; in 1963 he competed in a decathlon in Jakarta, Indonesia where he won a gold medal. In 1967 he was sent by Iraq to the U.S. Army Ranger School, and in the 1980s he was promoted to head of the Iraqi Special Forces School. from an entrenched Iranian force that numbered in the thousands in an air assault; because of this, President Saddam Hussein viewed him as a potential threat and subsequently placed him under the surveillance of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in 1984. including his sons, were arrested. His sons and 82 other operatives were later executed. According to the Iraqi paper Al-Zaman, Shahwani had presented evidence linking Iran to a series of attacks in Iraq including the 19 August 2009 Baghdad bombings, and left when Iraqi leadership refused to publicly implicate Iran in the bombings. Several days later the Iranian mission to the United Nations sent a letter of protest to the Washington Post over the previous article, claiming that Shahwani's statements about Iranian involvement were baseless.

Personal life Shawani is married to a Shiite. He had three sons, Major Anmar al-Shahwani, Captain Ayead al-Shahwani, and Lt. Atheer al-Shahwani, who were killed by Saddam Hussein for plotting a coup.