In the course of this voyage he appears to have attempted to contact the Comintern and to have asked the Palestine Communist Party for funds to help him engage in political work in Iraq.

It appears that before his return to Iraq at the end of January 1938, he may have been entrusted with a Comintern mission in Western Europe; he seems to have spent the winter of 1938 in France and Belgium.

On his return, Yusuf – for the moment going by the party name of Sa'id - met Abdullah Mas'ud, who was organising a communist group in Baghdad.

He then travelled around the country for some time, but in December 1940, on hearing that Mas'ud was launching a communist journal, al-Shararah (the spark), he returned to Baghdad and requested that he be in charge of it.

In November he was elected first secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party, and immediately set about imposing his authority on the organization, dismissing most members of the old Central Committee.

As the new Central Committee had retained control of Al-Sharara, Fahd's supporters started issuing a new journal, entitled al-Qa'ida (the base), in February 1943.

He concentrated on the workers in the foreign-owned industries, and was assisted primarily by his trusted supporters Ali Sakar, Zaki Bassim and Ahmad 'Abbas.

While a large proportion of the industrial workforce was employed in small locally owned workshops, the party paid less attention to this sector; in many cases they were working for members of their extended family, and in addition they did not have the strategic importance of the Kirkuk oilfield workers, the railwaymen, or the workers at Basra port, all of whom were in large measure won over to the party during Fahd's leadership.

A party conference met in March 1944 in Ali Shakar's house in the al-Shaikh 'Umar quarter of Baghdad and agreed a National Charter.

It also adopted the Syrian party's slogan, A free homeland and a happy people (watanun hurrun wa sha'bun sa'id).

The sentences created uproar, and the government backed down, commuting them to life imprisonment for Fahd and fifteen years for Bassim and Shmayyel.

The police raided the house and arrested Yehuda Siddiq, who after 28 days under torture broke down and told his interrogators that Malik Saif was the first mas'ul.

On 10 February 1949, Fahd was court-martialled on a charge of organising communist activity from prison, along with Zaki Bassim and Muhammad Husain al-Sabibi.

Fahd's organisational work, and the aura of martyrdom associated with his death at the hands of a deeply unpopular government, were essential factors in creating that movement.