[2] He was formerly a leading member of the Ba'ath Party, and was therefore very close to individuals such as Saddam Hussein who were subsequently accused of having committed a number of atrocities.
[citation needed] Al-Ali was born in Salah ad Din Governorate, in a village near the city of Tikrit.
The combination of these two events greatly reinforced the position of the Ba'ath, which was then able to invest vast amounts of capital into Iraq's economy and into its military.
After the 1991 Gulf War, Al-Ali decided to formally join the Iraqi opposition, and with Iyad Allawi formed the short-lived Al-Wifaq party.
As the war commenced in March 2003, Al-Ali was interviewed on a number of occasions on Al-Jazeera in which he condemned both the US-led invasion and Saddam Hussein's government.
As the Iraqi government began to fall, Al-Ali entered the country through the Syrian-Iraqi border and this event was captured on an Al-Arabiya documentary that was aired shortly after the war.
In 2003 Al-Ali lived in Baghdad for some months, where he published his weekly newspaper, which adopted an anti-occupation and opposition stance.