Feisal al-Istrabadi

Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi (Ar. فيصل امين الاسترابادي) (b. 1962) is an Iraqi politician and diplomat who represents Iraq at the United Nations as Deputy Permanent Representative. In 2004 he was one of the main drafters of Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law (TAL).

Background and Early Life

Al-Istrabadi was born in Virginia, in the United States of America, into a distinguished Iraqi family that had fled Iraq in the aftermath of the 1958 coup. That coup had removed the monarchy and imperiled those families that were intimately connected with it, including the al-Istrabadis. Feisal's grandfather, al-Hajj Mahmoud al-Istrabadi, had been been one of the drafters of Iraq's first constiution in 1925. His aunt, Lam'an Amin Zaki, had been in the delegation of women that went to Istanbul to seek the hand of the future wife of King Feisal II, who was killed in the coup.

During the coup, Feisal's grandmother Bibiya al-Istrabadi tried to smuggle Prime Minister Nuri al-Said to safety during the 1958 coup, but was killed in the attempt, along with al-Said, when she was discovered driving a car with the Prime Minister in the trunk.

Soon after Feisal's birth, his family moved back to Baghdad, as the situation had calmed there. He spent his childhood in the Iraqi capital until 1970, when the aftermath of the Baath Party's coup two years previously forced his family to move again, this time to Bloomington, Indiana.