[6] Al-Alusi hails from a very prominent Iraqi Sunni family from Anbar, and his father was a renowned scholar and Baghdad University professor of Classical Arabic literature.

In December 2002, he was involved in the takeover of the Iraqi embassy in Berlin to protest Hussein's tyranny, and was convicted of hostage taking by a German court and sentenced to three years in jail.

[7] After the invasion of Iraq, Alusi was appointed the General Director of Culture and Media at the Supreme National De-Baathification Commission.

In September 2004, after making a public visit to Israel, al-Alusi was expelled from the Iraqi National Congress and sacked from his job at the De-Baathification Commission.

He was indicted by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq for "having contacts with enemy states", a crime under a 1969 Baathist law.

[10] In September 2008, he again visited Israel and spoke at a conference on counter-terrorism organised by the IDC, a private college in Herzliya.

The Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Safaaeddine al-Safi, said he would seek a prosecution for "visiting a country that Iraq considers an enemy".

[11] Alusi appealed to the Supreme Federal Court which overturned the lifting of his immunity, ruling that it was unconstitutional as no crime had been committed.

[17] In August 2012 he received a letter informing him that he was to be dispossessed of his home in the Baghdad Green Zone, so that the house could go to the Minister of Environmental Affairs.