WITNESSES

The Commission hearings will take evidence from around fifty witnesses, drawing on a wide range of expertise and experience. Witnesses will include those with an in-depth understanding of the political, military, diplomatic and humanitarian issues at stake.

16 June

Lt Gen (Ret) Jay Garner
Retired US Army General, Jay Garner commanded missile batteries during the Gulf War, and afterwards was put in charge of securing Kurdish areas in Northern Iraq. In 2003 he was appointed as Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq following the invasion in March 2003. He was replaced in May by Paul Bremer, after an apparent disagreement with the White House over reconstruction policy.

15 June

Rachel Briggs
Rachel Briggs is the Head of Demos' Identity Programme, which examines the growing importance of identity on the political agenda. She recently co-authored Bringing it Home: Community-based approaches to counter-terrorism (2006).

Tim Finch
Tim Finch is the Director of Communications at the Refugee Council. The Refugee Council is the largest organisation in the UK working to help asylum seekers and refugees.

George Graham
George Graham is the Advocacy and Policy Officer, International Rescue Committee (IRC) UK. The IRC provides relief and post-conflict reconstruction to those affected by conflict around the world.

Richard Fenning
Richard Fenning is the Chief Executive of Control Risks Group. They are one of the principal firms providing security services in Iraq whose clients include the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office.

Salam Pax
Salam Pax is a Baghdad-based Iraqi architect, blogger, translator and journalist. He became known as the “the Baghdad Blogger” during (and after) the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Patrick Seale
Patrick Seale is a British writer, journalist and consultant on Middle East affairs. A former correspondent for ‘The Observer’, he has interviewed most of Syria’s prominent leaders during his career.

Dr Gareth Stansfield
Dr Gareth Stansfield is Associate Fellow of the Middle East Programme at Chatham House. He lived in Iraqi Kurdistan between 1997 and 2001, where he advised the Kurdistan Regional Government(s) on humanitarian policy issues.

Professor Brendan O'Leary
Professor O’Leary is a specialist on power-sharing systems in deeply divided places and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an international constitutional advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Dr Khaled Salih
Dr Khaled Sailh is the official Spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government. He is a specialist in Middle East politics and a consultant for the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council.

14 June

Dr Ali Allawi
Dr Allawi is the former Iraqi Minister for Finance. He recently published his blueprint for the future of Iraq 'The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace'.

Bayan Rahman
Bayan Rahman is the Kurdish Regional Government High Representative to the UK. She is also the chairman of the Kurdistan Development Corporation (KDC), a joint inward investment initiative by the Kurdistan government and international investors.

Tom Hardie-Forsyth
Tom Hardie-Forsyth is one of the founders and a Non Executive director of the Kurdistan Development Corporation. He is an adviser to the Kurdish Regional Government President Masoud Barzani. He has spent the last 4 years working for the Civil Contingencies Secretariat at the UK Cabinet Office. He first became involved with Iraqi-Kurdistan when he went there as an army officer in 1991 and became instrumental in the Coalition 'Safe Haven' Operation.

Simon Maxwell
Simon Maxwell is Director of the Overseas Development Institute.

Roger Wright
Roger Wright is the UNICEF Representative for Iraq.

12 June

Mike Gapes
Mike Gapes is the Labour MP for Ilford South. He is the Chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He has previously served as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee from 1992 to 1997, and the Defence Committee from 1999-2001 and 2003 to 2005.

Houzan Mahmoud
Houzan Mahmoud is the UK Head of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq and co-founder of the Iraq Freedom Congress. She is a leading international voice against the oppression of Iraqi women and the growing influence of political Islamists.

Zainab Salbi
Zainab Salbi is the CEO and Founder of Women for Women International. She serves on the advisory boards of Tällberg Foundation International Advisory Council, the Peter Gruber Foundation Women’s Rights Prize, World Pulse Magazine and the International Museum of Women

General Sir Mike Jackson
General Sir Mike Jackson is the former Chief of the General Staff from 2003-2006. During his 30 year army career he commanded the Kosovo Force in 1999 and was Commander in Chief of Army’s Land Command from 2000 before becoming CGS a month before the Iraq War.

Sir Lawrence Freedman
Sir Lawrence Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at King's College, London since 1982. He has recently been appointed Vice-Principal (Research) at King's. Professor Freedman is a prominent British scholar in strategic studies and has written extensively on nuclear strategy and the cold war. He wrote the seminal work on The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (1981; 1989; 2003).

11 June

Duncan Bullivant
Duncan Bullivant is the Chief Executive of Henderson Risk Group, a risk and security management company operating in Iraq.

Ghassan Attiyya
Ghassan Attiyya is the Executive Director of the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy and the editor in chief of the journal Mallaf al Iraqi (Iraqi File), published in 1991 from London and then re-launched from Baghdad.

HE Dr Sami Khiyami
HE Dr Sami Khiyami is currently Syrian ambassador to London. An IT and electronics expert by training, he has held a number of professional roles, including senior advisor to the Syrian banking industry and a member of the board of Syrian Arab Airlines.

Sir Menzies Campbell MP
Sir Menzies Campbell MP has been Leader of the Liberal Democrats since March 2006. Previously, he has served as a defence and foreign affairs spokesman, becoming Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in 1997 and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats in 2003.

Ammar Al Shahbander
Ammar Al Shahbander is responsible for all program operations in Iraq as the country director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

8 June

Sir Jeremy Greenstock
Sir Jeremy Greenstock is the former British Ambassador to the United Nations in New York and Her Majesty's former Special Representative in Iraq, where he worked within the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP
Sir Malcolm is a Conservative Member of Parliament. He was Defence Secretary 1992-95 and Foreign Secretary 1995-97.

David Horgan
David Horgan is the Managing Director of Petrel Resources, an Irish and London AIM-listed oil exploration company established in the early 1980s. The focus of the Company's operations is in Iraq, where it had been seeking an agreement to develop three existing oil fields in Southern Iraq while applying for exploration acreage in the Western Desert.

Dr Fred Kagan
Dr Fred Kagan is the resident Scholar of American Enterprise Institute. He is the co-author of 'Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success' which is said to be the reason for Bush’s troop surge.

Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He is CNN’s terrorism analyst and author of 'Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Bin Laden'.

7 June

Dr Toby Dodge
Dr Toby Doge is Reader in International Politics at the Queen Mary, University of London and Senior Fellow for the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. He is an expert on Iraq and Middle Eastern politics.

Dr Ali Ansari
Dr. Ali Ansari is Reader in Modern History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is an expert on Modern Middle Eastern history, and Islam and the West.

Sir Richard Dalton
Sir Richard Dalton is the former British Ambassador to Iran (2002–2006). He joined the diplomatic service in 1970, and served in such places as Jordan, Oman, Israel and the United Nations. Sir Richard has called for a diplomatic solution with Iran and argues that military action could be highly dangerous and counter productive.

Jan de Wilde
Jan de Wilde is Chief of Mission at the International Organisation for Migration London (IOM London). IOM is a leading organisation for migration and it seeks to meet the growing operational challenges of migration management and the advancement of understanding of migration issues.

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones
Dame Pauline Neville-Jones is the Chairman of QinetiQ Group plc and a BBC Governor. She is the former Chairman of the Joint Intelliegence Committee (JIC) and a former diplomat and Political Director of the Foreign Office.

Ayad Al-Samarai MP
Ayad Al- Samrai MP is an Iraqi MP of the Islamic Party, a leading Sunni political party.

6 June

Marion Birch
Marion Birch is the Director of Medact, a UK NGO whose membership is predominantly made up of health professionals. We conduct research and advocate for positive action to prevent violent conflict, improve health and raise the standards of health care worldwide.

Dr Heba al-Naseri
Dr Heba al-Naseri is a member of the UK Iraqi Medical Association. The association brings together the Iraqi expatriate doctors in this country to work towards our common interests and in particular work towards improving the health situation via our colleagues in Iraq.

Andy Bearpark CBE
Andy Bearpark is the Director General of the British Association of Private Security Companies. He is the former Director of Operations and Infrastructure Coalition Provisional Authority.

Tom Porteous
Tom Porteus is the Director of Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch conducts fact-finding investigations into human rights abuses in all regions of the world.

David Horowitz
David Horowitz is the Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post.

Noaman Muna
Chairman of Iraqi Al-Amal Association established in 1992 and operates throughout Iraq.  One of the founding members and past chairman of Iraqi Association in UK.

5 June

Greg Muttitt
Greg Muttitt is a Co-Director of PLATFORM, where he has worked since 2000. PLATFORM is an interdisciplinary organisation, working on development, environment and human rights issues, and specialising in the impacts of the international oil industry. He has been monitoring and researching Iraqi oil policy since 2003, before which his work focused on oil development in Azerbaijan and Russia.

Dr Bassoum Fattouh
Dr. Bassoum Fattouh is Reader in Finance and Management and Academic Director of the MSc in Management for the Middle East and North Africa, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is also Consultant Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. He researches aspects of the international oil pricing system such as the relationship between the futures market and spot market, the causes of oil price volatility and the dynamics of oil price differentials.

Sir Christopher Meyer
Sir Christopher is the Chair of the Press Complaints Commission (since 2003). He is the former British Ambassador to the United States (1997–2003). He introduced Prime Minister Tony Blair to President George W Bush and sat in on the crucial meetings between the two leaders as the invasion of Iraq was planned.

Dr Amitai Etzioni
Dr. Amitai Etzioni served as a Senior Advisor to the Carter White House, taught at Columbia University, Harvard, University of California at Berkeley, and is a University Professor at The George Washington University. Etzioni states that providing basic security must be the first priority in all foreign policy considerations for Iraq, even ahead of efforts to democratise the state.

Dennis MacShane MP
Labour MP for Rotherham (1994-present) Dennis MacShane was the former Minister for Europe (October 2002 to May 2005). His evidence is based on what he saw - namely that the rest of Europe did consider WMD was a real problem. No-one publicly at the time said Saddam had no WMD although he believes the wider political case should have been made.

Oliver Burch
Oliver Burch is the Iraq programme manager at Christian Aid. Christian Aid argued before military action was taken in Iraq that the war could lead to a humanitarian crisis and sectarian and religious conflict, and believes that a political solution must be reached before humanitarian efforts can make a difference.

Mohammed Bali
Mohammed Bali is the Country Desk Manager for Iraq and Lebanon at Muslim Aid. He joined Muslim Aid in Sept 2003 as programme development officer dealing with projects in Middle-East and North-Africa; now Country Desk Manager for Iraq and Lebanon overseeing and coordinating our projects in these two countries. Muslim Aid is a British-based charity organisation founded by Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) in 1985. Muslim Aid offer emergency humanitarian aid in the world’s most troubled countries.