Ismail Hafidh al-Lami (born 31 July 1970), also known as Abu Deraa ("Father of the Shield"), was an Iraqi Shi'ite warlord from the Mesopotamian Marshes who was known to kill and torture several Sunni Muslims during the Iraq War.
Biography[]
Ismail Hafidh al-Lami was born in the Mesopotamian Marshes in Iraq to a Shi'ite family. He was of the Ma'dan Bani Lam tribe, and he moved to Sadr City in Baghdad after the draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes by Saddam Hussein's army during the Gulf War as a part of his destruction of Shi'ite villages. He later joined Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, and he led Shi'ite death squads against Sunni Muslims. Becoming known as "Father of the Shield", "Abu Deraa" was responsible for kidnappings in broad daylight. One time, he lured 50 young Sunnis into ambulances so that they could donate blood to the insurgency against the Shi'ites, and he killed all of them. He also abducted five British citizens from the Ministry of Finance on 29 May 2007. Abu Deraa was reported dead on 4 December 2006 by the Islamic State of Iraq, who claimed that they killed him on a road north of Baghdad. However, he appeared in an interview on 20 December 2006 and fled to Iran in 2007. He later returned to Iraq in August 2010 after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki formed a coalition government with Muqtada al-Sadr, and Abu Deraa appeared in a Promised Day Brigades anti-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rally in June 2014 in response to the Northern Iraq Offensive.