A00033 - Ali Salim, Egyptian Writer Who Drove Across Israel

Salim, Ali
Ali Salim, also transliterated Ali Salem, (Arabic: على سالم‎; b. February 24, 1936 – d. September 22, 2015) was an Egyptian playwright, author, and political commentator known for controversially endorsing cooperation with Israel. The Los Angeles Times once described him as "a big, loud man known for his satiric wit".

From the premiere of his first play in 1965, he wrote 25 plays and fifteen books. One of the best known, The School of Troublemakers, debuted in 1971 and featured a rowdy class of children transformed by a kind teacher. His plays The Phantom of Heliopolis, The Comedy of Oedipus, The Man Who Fooled the Angels, and The Buffet became classics of the Egyptian theater. Salem's plays often include allegorical critiques of Egyptian politics with a strong vein of humor and satire.

In 1994, he wrote a book entitled My Drive to Israel about a trip he took to the country to satisfy his curiosity about it following the signing of the Oslo Accords. He later claimed that the trip was not "a love trip, but a serious attempt to get rid of hate. Hatred prevents us from knowing reality as it is". He spent 23 nights in Israel and concluded that "real co-operation" between the two nations should be possible. Though the book sold more than 60,000 copies, a bestseller by Egyptian standards, it provoked controversy, and Salem was subsequently ostracized from the Egyptian intellectual community and expelled from its Writer's Syndicate as a result of his "propaganda." He did not have a play or movie script produced in Egypt after the book's publication, though he continued to contribute columns to foreign media such as the London-based Al Hayat.  Salem's memoir was later adapted by Ari Roth into the play Ali Salem Drives to Israel, which had its world premiere in the United States in 2005.

A00032 - Esmail Kiram, Self-Proclaimed Sultan of Sulu

Esmail Kiram II (also spelled as Ismael Kiram II) (November 9, 1939 - September 19, 2015) was the self-proclaimed Sultan of Sulu in the Philippines from March 12, 2001 until his death.a00

A00031 - Muhammad Omar, Afghan Taliban Leader

Muhammad Omar

Muhammad (Mohammad) Omar, also called Mullah Omar   (born c. 1950–62?, near Kandahār, Afghanistan—died April, 2013, Pakistan), Afghan militant and leader of the Taliban (Pashto: Ṭālebān [“Students”]) who was the emir of Afghanistan (1996–2001). Mullah Omar’s refusal to extradite al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden prompted the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that overthrew the Taliban government there.

Biographical details about Mullah Omar are sparse and conflicting. He was an ethnic Pashtun of the Ghilzay branch who, reportedly, was born near Kandahar, Afghanistan. He is believed to have been illiterate and — aside from his madrasah studies — to have had minimal schooling. He fought with the mujahideen against the Soviets during the Afghan War (1978–92), and during that time he suffered the loss of his right eye in an explosion.

After the Soviet withdrawal, Mullah Omar established and taught at a small village madrasah in the province of Kandahār. The end of the war did not bring calm, however, and political and ethnic violence escalated thereafter. Claiming to have had a vision instructing him to restore peace, Mullah Omar led a group of madrasah students in the takeover of cities throughout the mid-1990s, including Kandahar, Herat, Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif. In 1996 a shura (council) recognized Mullah Omar as amīr al-muʾminīn(“commander of the faithful”), a deeply significant title in the Muslim world that had been in disuse since the abolition of the caliphate in 1924. That designation also made him emir of Afghanistan, which from October 1997 until the fall of the Taliban was known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Mullah Omar marked the occasion by removing what was held to be the cloak of the Prophet Muhammad from the mosque in Kandahār where it was housed and donning the relic, effectively symbolizing himself as Muhammad’s successor. The swift takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban under Mullah Omar is believed to have been funded at least in part by bin Laden, who had moved his base to Afghanistan after his expulsion from Sudan in the mid-1990s.

Under Mullah Omar’s leadership, Pashtun social codes were paramount, and strict Islamic principles were enforced. Education and employment for women all but ceased; capital punishment was enacted for transgressions such as adultery and conversion away from Islam; and music, television, and other forms of popular entertainment were prohibited. Among his most-infamous decisions was an order to demolish the colossal Buddha statues at Bamiyan, culturally significant relics of Afghanistan’s pre-Islamic history. To the outspoken regret of the international community, they were destroyed in 2001.

In the wake of al-Qaeda’s, September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, D. C., Mullah Omar’s refusal to extradite bin Laden prompted the United States to launch a series of military operations in Afghanistan. The Taliban government was overthrown, and Mullah Omar fled; his location was undetermined.

Mullah Omar was long notoriously reclusive. Meetings with non-Muslims or with Westerners were almost never granted, and it was unclear whether any of the photographs that purportedly depict him were authentic—circumstances that made the pursuit of him even more difficult. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it was believed that Mullah Omar continued to direct Taliban operations from the sanctuary of Pakistan, although the Taliban denied that supposition.

On July 29, 2015, the Afghan government announced that its intelligence service had learned that Mullah Omar had died in April 2013 in Pakistan. The report of Mullah Omar’s death was confirmed by a Taliban representative the next day, and his deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was announced as his successor.

A00030 - Tahsin Sahinkaya, Turkish Air Force General and Coup Leader

Tahsin Şahinkaya (b. 1925 – d. July 9, 2015) was a Turkish Air Force general. He was Commander of the Turkish Air Force from 1978 to 1983, and previously Secretary-General of the National Security Council (1977-1978). He was one of the five leaders of the 1980 military coup,  and after the coup he was a member of the Presidential Council. 

In 2012, a court case was launched against Şahinkaya and Kenan Evren (President of Turkey from 1980 to 1989) relating to the 1980 military coup. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment on June 18, 2014 by a court in Ankara, the capital of Turkey.

Şahinkaya died at age 90 in the military "Haydarpaşa GATA Hospital" in Istanbul on July 9, 2015. He was interred at Karacaahmet Cemetery on July 11 following a memorial ceremony held at the Turkish First Army headquarters in the Selimiye Barracks and subsequent religious funeral service at the nearby Buyuk Selimiye Mosque in Uskudar. He was survived by his wife Sema, son Serdar, daughter Sevgi Kartal and son-in-law Mustafa Kartal.

A00029 - Saud al-Faisal, Long-Time Saudi Foreign Minister

Saud al-Faisal
Saud bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Arabic: سعود بن فيصل بن عبد العزيز آل سعود‎), also known as Saud Al Faisal (Arabic: سعود الفيصل‎‎) (b. January 2, 1940, Ta'if, Saudi Arabia – d. July 9, 2015, Los Angeles, California), was a Saudi diplomat and statesman who served as Saudi Arabia's foreign minister from 1975 to 2015. By the time of his retirement, he was the world's longest-serving foreign minister. He was a member of the Saudi royal family.

A00028 - Omar Sharif, Legendary Star of "Doctor Zhivago"

Omar Sharif, original name Michael Demitri Shalhoub, Michael also spelled Michel, Shalhoub also spelled Chalhoub (b. April 10, 1932, Alexandria, Egypt - d. July 10, 2015, Cairo, Egypt), was an Egyptian actor of international acclaim, known for his dashing good looks and for iconic roles in such films as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

Shalhoub was born in Alexandria, the only son of a prosperous lumber merchant. When he was four years old, he moved with his family to Cairo, where he attended English schools. With early aspirations of being an actor, Shalhoub participated in theater productions in secondary school. At the urging of his father, he worked for the family’s lumber business after graduating. In 1953 his acting dreams were realized when he was cast opposite Egyptian star Faten Hamama in Siraa fil-wadi (1954; “Struggle in the Valley”). He began his acting career using a pseudonym, which went through several variations and eventually was rendered consistently in English as Omar Sharif. Sharif went on to star in several more films with Hamama, whom he married in 1955 (the couple divorced in 1974).

Sharif quickly rose to stardom in his native Egypt, appearing in more than 20 films before garnering international acclaim as Sherif Ali in David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia. His portrayal of the loyal Arab chief earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. Following this breakthrough role, Sharif was much in demand to play a variety of characters, including a Spanish priest in Behold a Pale Horse (1964) and the Mongolian conqueror in Genghis Khan (1965). Among Sharif’s most famous roles is the title character in Doctor Zhivago, Lean’s adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel of the same name. Starring opposite Julie Christie, Sharif portrayed a poet-doctor in the middle of a love triangle. He later was cast as a German military man in The Night of the Generals (1967), Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in Mayerling (1968), and the revolutionary Che Guevara in Che! (1969). Sharif was also well known for his portrayal of Nick Arnstein, husband to Barbra Streisand's Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1968); he reprised the role of Arnstein in the film’s sequel, Funny Lady (1975).

Sharif continued to appear both on-screen and on television into the 21st century, though he appeared in few notable roles after the mid-1970s. Instead, he devoted much of his time to the card game bridge, releasing books, videos, and video games on the subject. Beginning in the 1970s, Sharif published a syndicated column about bridge. He also wrote an autobiography, L’Éternel Masculin (1976; The Eternal Male), with Marie-Thérèse Guinchard.

A00027 - Tariq Aziz, Top Aide to Saddam Hussein

'Aziz, Tariq
'Aziz, Tariq (Tariq 'Aziz) (Mikhail Yuhanna) (Tareq 'Aziz).  Iraqi politician and foreign minister.  

Tariq Aziz, also spelled Ṭāriq ʿAzīz, original name Mikhail Yuhanna   (b. April 28, 1936, Qaḍā Talkīf, Iraq — d. June 5, 2015, Al-Nāṣiriyyah, Iraq), was an Iraqi public official who served as Foreign Minister (1983–91) and Deputy Prime Minister (1979–2003) in the Ba'thist government of Saddam Hussein.

Mikhail Yuhanna, later and more popularly known as Tariq Aziz or Tareq Aziz, was a close advisor of former President Saddam Hussein for decades. Their association began in the 1950s, when both were Ba'ath party activists, while the party was still officially banned.

Since Saddam Hussein was both Prime Minister and President of Iraq, Aziz often played the role of Iraq's de facto head of government. Because of security concerns, Hussein rarely left Iraq, and Aziz in turn would often represent Iraq at high-level diplomatic summits. What the United States wanted, he averred, was not "regime change" in Iraq but rather "region change". He summed up the Bush Administration's reasons for war against Iraq tersely: "oil and Israel."

He was born in Mosul.  In 1950, he joined the Ba’th Party as one of its early members.  In 1958, he received a bachelor’s degree in English from the College of Arts at the University of Baghdad.  During this year he also started working as a journalist on a Jumhuria newspaper.  In 1963, following the Ba’th coup, he became editor of al-Jamahir newspaper, the mouthpiece of the party.  In 1964, he worked in the press office of the Arab Ba’th Socialist Party in Syria.  In 1966, he moved back to Iraq and, in 1969, he became editor in chief of the new al-Tawra newspaper, established by the Ba’th Party.  In 1972, he was appointed as a member to the Revolutionary Command Council.  In 1974, he became deputy chairman of the Bureau of Culture and Information for the Ba’th Party, a position he would hold until 1983.  Later that year, he was elected as candidate member of the Iraqi Command of Ba’th party, and on November 11, he was appointed as Minister of Information.

On January 10, 1977, 'Aziz was elected as member of the Iraqi Command of the Ba’th Party, a position involving more power than a cabinet post.  On September 4, 1977, he was appointed as member of the Revolution Command Council.  On October 8, 1977, he was elected as member of the Ba’th National Leadership.  On October 15, 1977, he was discharged as Minister of Information to assume the functions of Ba’th party leadership.

On July 16, 1979, 'Aziz was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister.  In April 1980, 'Aziz was the target of an assassination attempt by Islamist militants, but 'Aziz survived the attempt without any injuries.

On January 14, 1983, 'Aziz became Foreign Minister of Iraq, getting the difficult position of defending Iraq’s attack on Kuwait in August the previous year. On March 23, 1983, 'Aziz was discharged as Minister of Foreign Affairs and began working full time as Deputy Prime Minister.  In this position, 'Aziz was Iraq’s top negotiator with the dealings with the United Nations after Iraq’s surrender to the allied forces at the end of the Gulf War.

On April 18, 2001, 'Aziz was appointed Foreign Minister for the second time.   

Throughout his career, 'Aziz proved to be talented in keeping cordial contacts with foreign powers especially the Soviet Union, France, and the United States.  However, with the strong negative reactions from Western powers following Iraq’s attack on Kuwait in 1990, he lost the propaganda war in Western media.  

'Aziz is a Chaldean Catholic, a fact that often was used against him both by Iraqi Muslims and leaders of neighbor Muslim countries like Iran.  But as he remained loyal to Saddam Hussein, Hussein also remained loyal to 'Aziz.  'Aziz was married and had two daughters and two sons.

'Aziz was captured in April 2003 as a consequence of the United States invasion of Iraq.  

He was acquitted of some charges on March 1 2009 following a trial, but was jailed for 15 years on March 11 2009 for his role in the executions of 42 merchants found guilty of profiteering in 1992.

Like other senior Baʿthists, Aziz was tried on numerous charges, and in October 2010 he was sentenced to death for crimes against Islamic political parties during Saddam’s reign. His death sentence was never carried out, however, and he died in prison in 2015.