Ahmed Chalabi seen here with Nabeel Rajeb (last on the right - a so call Human Rights dictator from Bahrain) was one of the key figures in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq as a leading Iraqi exile in Washington, where he lobbied the US government to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He supplied intelligence from Iraqi exiles and defectors to his backers in the Pentagon and the White House - and to The New York Times - on Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal of WMDs which was later proved to be unreliable. He was also accused of working for Iranian intelligence. Backed by the Pentagon as a future leader of Iraq, he returned home after the 2003 invasion at the head of a small fighting force in hopes of building political legitimacy. In the early 1990s, his Iraqi National Congress was funded by the CIA which subsequently distanced itself from him after a failed uprising in Kurdish Iraq. Chalabi was also convicted in absentia by a Jordanian court of embezzlement, theft, forgery and currency speculation over the collapse of the private Petra Bank, and sentenced to 22 years in prison. He has always maintained his innocence