Bruno Kreisky Foundation

for Human Rights

Jalal Talabani (Iraq)

Jalal Talabani is a lawyer and Kurdish rights advocate from Kurdistan. He is one of the most well-known leaders of the Kurds. He has been imprisoned multiple times and was exiled from Baghdad.

Talabani led the Kurdish resistance against Iraq from the mountains of Kurdistan. In the 1980s he was the General Secretary of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. He led the Kurdish delegation in Bagdad from 1983-1985. The international attention was soon drawn to the Kurdish problem, namely that Kurdish cities and villages were attacked by Saddam Hussein’s army.

Jalal Talabani is the current president of Iraq. He was appointed president in 2005 under the interim government, reconducted in office in 2006, and recently elected to a third term in November of 2010. Talabani has used his position to try and make peace between various groups within Iraq.
(topics.nytimes.com).