13 Facts About Fuad al-Rikabi

Fuad al-Rikabi was an Iraqi politician and the founder of the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.

The assassination attempt failed, and most of the leading Ba'athists and co-conspirators, including Fuad al-Rikabi, fled to Syria.

Fuad al-Rikabi agreed with Abdullah Rimawi's observation that the National Command, the ruling organ of the Ba'ath Party, had deviated from Ba'athist thought.

Fuad al-Rikabi was killed by fellow inmates according to an official account, media unaffiliated to the Iraqi state claimed he was killed by the Iraqi security services.

The party initially consisted of a majority of Shia Muslims, as Fuad al-Rikabi recruited supporters mainly from his friends and family, but it slowly became Sunni-dominated.

Two years later Fuad al-Rikabi affiliated the Iraqi Regional Branch with the National Front, an opposition group that consisted of the Iraqi Communist Party, the National Democratic Party, and the Istiqlal Party.

The attempt failed, and most of the leading Ba'athists and leading figures in the conspiracy, including Fuad al-Rikabi, escaped to Syria.

Fuad al-Rikabi cited as proof the dissolution of the UAR, the National Command's collaboration with anti-Arab nationalist groups such as the communists, and the expulsion of members who held national revolutionary views.

The National Command replied to these accusations by declaring that Fuad al-Rikabi was unqualified to speak for the party, and furthermore that he had lost his right to speak on the behalf of the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party when the Iraqi Regional Command was dissolved on 29 November 1959.

Attacks on Fuad al-Rikabi continued, and the Iraqi Regional Congress in July 1960 called the National Command to initiate an investigation against him.

At the fourth national conference in Beirut, the National Command passed a resolution stating that Fuad al-Rikabi had henceforth no responsibilities in Ba'ath Party affairs.

Together with Rimawi and other Palestinian defectors from the Syrian Regional Branch, Fuad al-Rikabi formed the Socialist Unionists Movement, a Nasserist political movement.

Fuad al-Rikabi was arrested in 1971 and was killed in prison by the Iraqi security service.