I couldn’t ignore the email inviting me to meet the person “with the worst job in global politics”. He wasn’t a world leader or a central bank governor. His name is Mohammed Mahdi al-Bayati and he’s the minister for human rights in Iraq. What could be more challenging than that?
He has to deal on a daily basis with horrific abuses against his people, ranging from killings to beheadings, from enslavement to torture. The government he works for can’t rely on a properly trained army, military capabilities or good neighbours. And while the minister’s experience in the field may be first hand — he was in opposition to a politial opponent of Saddam Hussein and many members of his family had been arrested and tortured — his staff and the security forces fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis ) need training in human rights, and he was in London to ask for help.
I meet him at a Park Lane hotel and he tells me about the atrocities committed by the jihadis of Isis: the swathes of villages devastated, the churches destroyed, and the more than 3,000 women prisoners from the Yazidi sect taken hostage. “Some of the women were sold for cash, some are being bought by people who give them back to their families, some were made slaves to Isis leaders.”