"[3] Allawi is often described as a moderate Shia (a member of Iraq's majority faith) chosen for his secular background and ties to the United States.

[4][5] After his interim government assumed legal custody of Saddam Hussein and re-introduced capital punishment, Allawi gave assurances that he would not interfere with the trial and would accept any court decisions.

[8] On July 17, The Sydney Morning Herald alleged that one week before the handover of sovereignty, Allawi himself summarily executed six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station.

[9] The allegations are backed up by two independent sources[10] and the execution is said to have taken place in presence of about a dozen Iraqi police, four American security men and Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib.

His minister Hoshiyar Zebari deplored the "one-sided and biased coverage" and declared that the interim government "will not allow some people to hide behind the slogan of freedom of the press and media.

[12] The banning of Al Jazeera was widely criticised in the Arab world and the West, for example by Reporters Sans Frontières who called it "a serious blow to press freedom".

[13][14] The negotiations that followed the fighting between Muqtada al-Sadr's militia and joint US/Iraqi forces in Najaf ended when Allawi withdrew his emissary Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie on August 14.