Mohammad al-Massari

Mohammad al-Mass'ari (Arabic: محمد المسعري, born 8 November 1946, Mecca) is a Britain-based Saudi physicist and political dissident of Egyptian descent who gained asylum in the United Kingdom in 1994. He runs the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) and is an adviser to the London-based non-profit Islamic Human Rights Commission. In the mid-2000s, he was employed as a lecturer by the physics department of King's College London.

Mohammad al-Massari successfully fought deportation from the United Kingdom in 1996.

History

Al-Massari was born in Mecca to a Saudi father and Egyptian mother. In the early 60s, he went to study in Germany on a state scholarship and received a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics from the University of Cologne in 1976. He subsequently became a professor at King Saud University. He fled Saudi Arabia in 1993 and gained asylum in the UK.

During the trial of individuals charged with roles in the bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, evidence was made public that an Exact-M 22 satellite phone purchased by another Saudi dissident Saad Al Faqih, and given to Mohammad al-Massari in 1996, to aid in his deportation battle, received a call from one of the Nairobi suicide bombers eight days before the attack. The phone was also reported to have been used to make calls to arrange an interview of Usama bin Laden by ABC News World News Tonight.

There are reports that attribute to Mohammad al-Massari the assertion that Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein contacted Afghan Arabs in late 2001, following the American invasion, inviting them to find refuge in Iraq.