Tahir Jalil Habbush, an Iraqi intelligence official who served as director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service from 1995 to 2003, died on April 2, 2026, in Erbil, Iraq, at the age of 75 or 76.
Born in Tikrit in 1950, he served under the regime of Saddam Hussein and was Iraq’s head of intelligence in 2001. In January 2003, shortly before the start of the Iraq War, he informed MI6 that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Habbush was later listed by the United States as the “Jack of Diamonds” in its deck of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards and remained a fugitive until his death.
Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti (Arabic: طاهر جليل حبوش التكريتي; 1950 – 2 April 2026) was an Iraqi intelligence official who served under the regime of Saddam Hussein. In 2001, he was Iraq’s head of intelligence and as such, informed MI6 in January 2003 (shortly before the start of the Iraq War) that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.