Jamal Ja’far Muhammad Ali Al Ibrahim, also known as Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, was the Deupty Commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces as well as Commander of Operations until he was killed alongside Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike operation mainly targeting the former IRGC Quds Force leader on January 3, 2020. 

Muhandis showed interest in politics from a very early age. When he was in high school, he joined Hizb al-Da’wa al-Islamiyya, an Iraqi Shia political party opposing  the Iraqi Ba’athist regime. After the al-Da’wa was banned, he left Iraq in 1980 to Kuwait, where he engaged in oppositional activities against Saddam Huessein’s regime. In 1983, he was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Kuwait for being involved in a series of bombings that attacked U.S. and French embassies. He left Kuwait for Iran, where he joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the Iran-Iraq war. In March 2003, he returned to Iraq and began playing a role in the political process as a member of the Iran-backed al-Da’wa party where he eventually became a member of Parliament in 2005.

As Islamic State (IS) invaded large parts of northern and western Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis led the gathering of several armed Shia factions with Iranian support into the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). After its formation, in 2014, he was appointed its deputy commander. Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis remained the Deputy Commander of the PMF until his death by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad targeting Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2020.

The Iranian-backed militias within the PMF, including Kata’ib Hezbollah, which Muhandis directly led, have been accused of unlawful killings, disappearances, extortion, detention in ‘secret prisons,’ sexual abuse, summary executions, discrimination, harassment, abductions, beatings, intimidation, forced evictions, destruction of property, among others.