Khidir Hamza (Arabic: خضر حمزة) is an Iraqi atomic scientist who worked for Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme in the 1980s and early 1990s.
[3][4] Hamza first came to the United States in the 1960s, attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after being recommended by Abdul Jabbar Abdullah, a prominent Iraqi scientist and an alumnus of MIT himself.
He intended to stay permanently in America, but following the 1968 coup, Khidir heard about how families of relatives living overseas were arrested and reportedly tortured.
After the Gulf War, in response to Saddam Hussein's increasing restrictions on scientists, Hamza left Iraq and defected to the United States.
In 2000 he co-authored the book Saddam's Bombmaker: The Daring Escape of the Man Who Built Iraq's Secret Weapon with Jeff Stein (ISBN 0-684-87386-9).
Imad Khadduri, a former scientist with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, accused Hamza of exaggerating "to a great extent his own role in the nuclear weapon program."