Najeeb Al Nuaimi

Najeeb Al Nuaimi is a Qatari lawyer and human rights activist. He is a former cabinet minister of Qatar, having served as the Minister of Justice from 1995 to 1997. He previously taught public law at Qatar University.

Al Nuaimi and his firm assembled a legal defense team to represent more than 70 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay in 2002. He also served as the defense lawyer for imprisoned Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami in 2013.

Personal life In 2001, his cousin, a 22-year-old Bahraini citizen named Abdulla Majid Al Naimi, was detained in Pakistan and later sent to Guantanamo Bay. In 2002, he and his firm assembled a legal team to represent alleged Al-Qaeda and Taliban members held at Guantanamo Bay. prisoners. He argued that the majority of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay were wrongly accused of being terrorists by the Pakistani police force and the Afghan Northern Alliance.

He was one of the three foreign lawyers on Saddam Hussein's legal defense team. He took part in the Dujail and Anfal trials, arguing that the trials were held unlawfully because the U.S. invasion contravened international law. He claimed he was contacted by Saddam's family and colleagues to take up the job.

He represented Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami, who had been imprisoned by the Qatari government for reciting a poem which was deemed to be critical to the emir. Al-Ajami was handed down a life sentence in 2012, which Al Nuaimi appealed.

In 2012, Nuaimi claimed that he would defend Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in court if it was requested of him. However, he declined an offer to represent former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in court.