Ayatollah Sayyid Hadi al-Husayni al-Modarresi (Arabic: هادي الحسيني المدرسي; Persian: هادى حسينى مدرسى; b.
[10] Al-Modarresi's advocacy of political freedom and strong stance against terrorism started from an early age when Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq.
When his uncle, Hasan was imprisoned, and the pressures of the Bathists anti-Shia sentiment peaked,[11][12] Al-Modarresi left Iraq in 1970, for Lebanon, and then briefly joined his brother Muhammad-Taqi, in Kuwait.
[14] In Bahrain, al-Modarresi rose to national prominence, and was awarded with power of representation from grand religious authorities such as Muhammad al-Shirazi, Ruhollah Khomeini,[15] Shihab al-Din al-Marashi, and Abd al-A'la al-Sabziwari, being labelled as a scholar "worthy of taking a leadership position" and urging Muslims to follow his lead.
[16][17][18] In 1979, the Bahraini authorities placed a travel ban on al-Modarresi, after his organisation, the Islamic Front for Liberation of Bahrain (a branch of his brother's (Muhammad-Taqi) larger risali movement), was announced in the press, being dubbed as an organisation that wanted to import the Iranian revolution into Bahrain, and pointing the finger at al-Modarresi, as its leader.
However, there was an international uproar, with the interference of some of the Islamic republic's senior leaders, and Yasser Arafat personally, that pressured the Bahraini government to release him, and send him over to Iran, with an apology.
The IFLB came to prominence as the front organisation for the 1981 coup, which attempted to install al-Modarresi as the spiritual leader of a newly established theocratic Shia state.
[21] Al-Modarresi became a founding member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and was among the active figures of the Iraqi opposition in exile.