A00009 - Mutaz Barshim, Record Setting High Jumper

Mutaz Essa Barshim (Arabic: معتز عيسى برشم‎; b. 24 June 1991) is a Qatari track and field athlete who specializes in the high jump.  He is the national record and Asian record holder with a best mark of 2.43 m (7 ft 11¹⁄₂ in). He was the Asian Indoor and World Junior champion in 2010. He won the high jump gold medals at the 2011 Asian Athletics Championships and 2011 Military World Games, and he won the bronze medal at the 2012 Olympic Games held in London, with a height of 2.29 m (7' 6"). He jumps off his left foot, using the Fosbury Flop technique, with a pronounced backwards arch over the bar.

A00008 - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Caliph of Islamic State

Baghdadi, Abu Bakr al-
Ibrahim ibn Awwad ibn Ibrahim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai (Arabic: إبراهيم ابن عواد ابن إبراهيم ابن علي ابن محمد البدري السامرائي‎), more commonly known by his nom de guerre Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (أبو بكر البغدادي), is the Caliph of the self-proclaimed Islamic State -- previously the Islamic State and the Levant (ISIL) or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—located in western Iraq and north-eastern Syria.  He was formerly known as Abu Du'a (أبو دعاء).  He also uses the aliases Amir al-Mu'minin Caliph Ibrahim (أمير المؤمنين الخليفة إبراهيم) and, claiming descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi Al-Husseini Al-Qurashi (أبو بكر البغدادي الحسيني الهاشمي القرشي).

On October 4, 2011, the United States State Department listed al-Baghdadi as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and announced a reward of up to $10 million (USD - United States Dollars) for information leading to his capture or death.  Only the head of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had a larger bounty ($25 million USD).

Al-Baghdadi is believed to have been born near Samarra, Iraq, in 1971. According to a biography that circulated on jihadist internet forums in July 2013, he obtained a BA, MA, and PhD in Islamic Studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad.

After the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Baghdadi helped to found the militant group Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah (JJASJ), in which he served as head of the sharia committee. Al-Baghdadi and his group joined the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) in 2006, in which he served as a member of the MSC's sharia committee. Following the renaming of the MSC as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in 2006, al-Baghdadi became the general supervisor of the ISI's sharia committee and a member of the group's senior consultative council.

According to the United States Department of Defense records, al-Baghdadi was held at Camp Bucca as a 'civilian internee' by United States Forces - Iraq  from February until December 2004, when he was recommended for release by a Combined Review and Release Board. A number of newspapers have instead stated that al-Baghdadi was interned from 2005 to 2009. These reports originate from an interview with the former commander of Camp Bucca, Colonel Kenneth King, and are not substantiated by Department of Defense records.

The Islamic State of Iraq, also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, was the Iraqi division of al-Qaeda.  Al-Baghdadi was announced as leader of the ISI on May 16, 2010, following the death of his predecessor Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.  

As leader of the ISI, al-Baghdadi was responsible for masterminding large-scale operations such as the August 28, 2011 attack on the Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad which killed prominent Sunni lawmaker Khalid al-Fahdawi. Between March and April 2011, the ISI claimed 23 attacks south of Baghdad, all allegedly carried out under al-Baghdadi's command.

Following the death of founder and head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2011, in Abbottabad, Pakistan,  al-Baghdadi released a statement praising bin Laden and threatening violent retaliation for his death. On May 5, 2011, al-Baghdadi claimed responsibility for an attack in Hilla, 62 miles south of Baghdad, that killed 24 policemen and wounded 72 others.

On August 15, 2011, a wave of ISI suicide attacks beginning in Mosul resulted in 70 deaths. Shortly thereafter, in retaliation for bin Laden's death, the ISI pledged on its website to carry out 100 attacks across Iraq featuring various methods of attack, including raids, suicide attacks, roadside bombs and small arms attacks, in all cities and rural areas across the country.

On December 22, 2011, a series of coordinated car bombings and IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attacks struck over a dozen neighborhoods across Baghdad, killing at least 63 people and wounding 180. The assault came just days after the US completed its troop withdrawal from the country.  On December 26, the ISI released a statement on jihadist internet forums claiming credit for the operation, stating that the targets of the Baghdad attack were "accurately surveyed and explored" and that the "operations were distributed between targeting security headquarters, military patrols and gatherings of the filthy ones of the al-Dajjal Army", referring to the Mahdi Army of Shia warlord Muqtada al-Sadr.  

On December 2, 2012, Iraqi officials claimed that they had captured al-Baghdadi in Baghdad following a two-month tracking operation. Officials claimed that they had also seized a list containing the names and locations of other al-Qaeda operatives.  However, this claim was rejected by the ISI.  In an interview with Al Jazeera, on December 7, 2012, Iraq's Acting Interior Minister said that the arrested man was not al-Baghdadi, but rather a section commander in charge of an area stretching from the northern outskirts of Baghdad to Taji.  

Al-Baghdadi remained leader of the ISI until its formal expansion into Syria in 2013, when in a statement on April 8, 2013, he announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) -- alternatively translated from the Arabic as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

When announcing the formation of ISIS, al-Baghdadi stated that the Syrian Civil War jihadist faction, Jabhat al-Nusra — also known as al-Nusra Front — had been an extension of the ISI in Syria and was now to be merged with ISIS. The leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohammad al-Jawlani, disputed this merging of the two groups and appealed to al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri, who issued a statement that ISIS should be abolished and that al-Baghdadi should confine his group's activities to Iraq.^[31] Al-Baghdadi, however, dismissed al-Zawahiri's ruling and took control of a reported eighty percent (80%) of Jabhat al-Nusra's foreign fighters. In January 2014, ISIS expelled Jabhat al-Nusra from the Syrian city of Ar-Raqqah, and in the same month clashes between the two in Syria's Deir ez-Zor Governorate killed hundreds of fighters and displaced tens of thousands of civilians. In February 2014, al-Qaeda disavowed any relations with ISIS.

According to several Western sources, al-Baghdadi and ISIS have received private financing from citizens in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and enlisted fighters through recruitment drives in Saudi Arabia in particular.

On June 29, 2014, ISIS announced the establishment of a caliphate. Al-Baghdadi was named its caliph, to be known as Caliph Ibrahim, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was renamed the Islamic State (IS). 

The declaration of a caliphate was heavily criticized by Middle Eastern governments and other jihadist groups, and by Sunni Muslim theologians and historians.

IOn July 5, 2014, a video was released apparently showing al-Baghdadi making a speech at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, northern Iraq. A representative of the Iraqi government denied that the video was of al-Baghdadi, calling it a "farce". However, both the BBC and the Associated Press quoted unnamed Iraqi officials as saying that the man in the video was believed to be al-Baghdadi. In the video, al-Baghdadi declared himself the world leader of Muslims and called on Muslims everywhere to support him.

On July 8, 2014, ISIS launched its magazine Dabiq.  Its title appears to have been selected for its eschatological connections with the Islamic version of the End times or Malahim. 

A00007 - Maryam Mirzakhani, First Woman to Receive the Fields Medal

Maryam Mirzakhani (Persian: مریم میرزاخانی‎; born May 1977) is an Iranian mathematician, and a full professor of mathematics (since 1 September 2008) at Stanford University. 

Her research interests include Teichmuller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry.   In 2014, Mirzakhani became the first woman, as well as the first Iranian and the second person from the Middle East (after Elon Lindenstrauss), to be awarded the Fields Medal. 

Mirzakhani found international recognition as a brilliant teenager after receiving gold medals at both the 1994 International Mathematical Olympiad (Hong Kong) and the 1995 International Mathematical Olympiad (Toronto), where she was the first Iranian student to finish with a perfect score.

Maryam Mirzakhani was born in 1977 in Tehran, Iran. She went to high school in the city at the Farzanegan School, a school for gifted girls that is administered by the National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET). Mirzakhani competed and was recognized internationally for her math skills, receiving gold medals at both the 1994 International Mathematical Olympiad (Hong Kong) and the 1995 International Mathematical Olympiad (Toronto), where she was the first Iranian student to finish with a perfect score.

Mirzakhani obtained her BSc in mathematics (1999) from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. She went to the United States for graduate work, earning a PhD from Harvard University (2004), where she worked under the supervision of the Fields Medalist Curtis McMullen. She was also a 2004 research fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University. 

Mirzakhani has made several contributions to the theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces.  In her early work, Maryam Mirzakhani discovered a formula expressing the volume of a moduli space with a given genus as a polynomial in the number of boundary components. This led her to obtain a new proof for the formula discovered by Edward Witten and Maxim Kontsevich on the intersection numbers of tautology classes on moduli space, as well as an asymptotic formula for the growth of the number of simple closed geodesics on a compact hyperbolic surface. Her subsequent work has focused on Teichmüller dynamics of moduli space. In particular, she was able to prove the long-standing conjecture that William Thurston's earthquake flow onTeichmuller space is ergodic.

Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014 for "her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces". She was congratulated for her win by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

She married Jan Vondrak, a theoretical computer scientist.  They had a daughter named Anahita.

A00006 - Ahmed Abu Khattala, Islamist Militia Commander in Libya

Khattala, Ahmed Abu

Ahmed Abu Khattala (born c. 1971) was a Islamist militia commander in Libya, a commander of Ansar al-Sharia militia. He is suspected of participating in the 2012 Benghazi attack on the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, in which the American Ambassador and three other Americans were killed. In a December 2013 investigation of the attack, the New York Times described Abu Khattala as a central figure.  However, Abu Khattala denied killing the Americans or being part of the attack.

Abu Khattala spent most of his adult life in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, jailed by the Qaddafi government for his Islamist views. During the 2011 uprising against Qaddafi in Libya, he formed his own militia of perhaps two dozen fighters, naming it Obeida Ibn Al Jarra for an early Islamic general. He later became involved in Ansar al-Shariah, a group of as many as 200 militants who, had broken away from the other militias in 2012 in protest of those militia's support for parliamentary elections in Libya.  Abu Khattala opposed American involvement in Libya and in interviews with the New York Times stated that “the enmity between the American government and the peoples of the world is an old case.” In regards to the role of the air campaign of NATO that overthrew Colonel Qaddafi, he believed that if NATO had not intervened, “God would have helped us.” He also claimed that, “We know the United States was working with both sides” and considering “splitting up" Libya.

Witnesses of the September 11, 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi say they saw Abu Khattala leading the attack. On August 6, 2013, United States officials confirmed that Abu Khattala had been charged with playing a significant role in the attack. 

On the weekend of June 14 to June 15, 2014, U.S. Special Forces captured Abu Khattala in a covert mission in Libya. Khattala is one of the suspected leaders of the 2012 Benghazi attack. 

A00005 - Malik Bendjelloul, Oscar Winner for "Searching for Sugar Man"

Bendjelloul, Malik

Malik Bendjelloul (September 14, 1977 – May 13, 2014) was an Algerian Swedish Academy-Award-winning  documentary filmmaker, journalist and former child actor. He is best known for his 2012 documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, which won an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award.

A00004 - Asad Mansur al-Faqih, First Saudi Arabian Ambassador to United States

Sheik Asad Mansur al-Faqih (1909 - April 2, 1988) was the first Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, 

Sheik Faqih was a delegate to the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945, where he signed the charter on behalf of Saudi Arabia. He was appointed Ambassador to the United States later that year. He served simultaneously as Ambassador to Canada and Mexico and was his country's delegate to the United Nations from 1946 to 1955. He established Saudi embassies in China and Japan and served as chief inspector of diplomatic missions. He retired as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in 1963.

Sheik Faqih was also his country's Chief Justice and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and played a key role in maintaining strong Saudi ties with the Allies during World War II.

A resident of the United States after 1984, Sheik Faqih died of prostate cancer on April 2, 1988 at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif. He was 79 years old.  He was survived by his wife, Yacout; seven children, Aida Abi-Mershed of London, Selma Hassen, Saniya Hamady and Zuheir al-Faqih of Washington, and Dr. Khaled al-Faqih, Ghida Heaps and Mrs. Hoda Cox of Walnut Creek; 20 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

000003 - Maryam Durani, Afghan Human Rights Activist

Maryam Durani: (Arabic: مَریَم دورانی), is an Afghan activist. Daughter of Haji Mohammad Eisa Durani, Maryam Durani was born in 1987. Hailing from the Muhammadzai tribe, Maryam is a graduate of the business department of American University of Afghanistan and currently she is a third class student of Law and Political Science at Noor University. Maryam Durani was also Kandahar people’s representative in the provincial council. She has served in different positions such as director of Khadijatul Kubra women's association for culture, owner of Merman Radio (special women radio) and as founder of the Kandahar woman advocacy network. She received the World Ten Brave Women’s award on March 8, 2012 as well as a World 100 Influential Figure’s award on April 20, 2012.  She has also received the Brave Woman award from the State of Pennsylvania, the Women Rights Protector’s award from Washington and an Iraq and Afghanistan Female Peace Activist’s appreciation letter from Turkey. She is a broadcaster and the manager of the Merman Radio of Kandahar. On April 6, 2013, she founded the Women's Network (Advocacy) in Kandahar. Maryam also established the Malalai Maiwandi Internet cafe a free women's internet cafe to connect more women to the world in a safe and comfortable space. she opened Malali Maiwandi internet cafe on September 25, 2013 which is the first of its kind in the Afghanistan.  There Afghan women could use the cafe for getting information about current affairs and obtain educational material, which is the main reason why she established the women's cafe. In 2012, she was chosen by Time Magazine as "The 100 Most Influential People in the World".  According to Time, "As the owner and operator of a radio station (Merman Radio) that focuses on women's issues and as a member of the Kandahar provincial council, Durani stands up for the region's women with remarkable bravery." On March 8, 2012, she became a recipient of the prestigious United States Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award.

000002 - Samira Ibrahim, Egyptian Activist

Samira Ibrahim (Arabic: سميرة إبراهيم‎) (born c. 1987) is an Egyptian activist who came to prominence during the Egyptian revolution .

On March 9, 2011, she participated in a sit-in at Tahrir Square in Cairo. The military violently dispersed protest participants, and Samira and other women were beaten, given electric shocks, strip searched, and videotaped by the soldiers. They were also subjected to virginity tests. The tests were allegedly carried out to protect the soldiers from claims of rape.

After succeeding in placing the case in front of a civilian court, a court order was issued in December 2011 to stop the practice of “virginity tests”. However in March 2012, a military court exonerated Dr. Adel El Mogy from charges laid in connection with the virginity testing of Ibrahim.

Ibrahim vowed to take her case to the international courts.

In early March 2013, Ibrahim came under criticism after Samuel Tadros, writing in The Weekly Standard, accused her of posting anti-Semitic and anti-American statements on her Twitter account. These statements included quoting Adolf Hitler, writing: "I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it. Hitler.” In reaction to a suicide bombing of a bus of Israelis in Bulgaria, she wrote "Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.” In 2012, on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, she tweeted "Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning".

The United States State Department subsequently announced that it would not be giving the International Women of Courage Award to Samira Ibrahim in light of these comments.

Initially, Ibrahim claimed that her Twitter account had been "previously stolen" and that "any tweet on racism and hatred is not me”. However, she later stated "I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award." The United States State Department later stated that Ibrahim had since left the United States to return to Egypt.

On March 8, 2013, a spokeswoman for the United States State Department stated that "Upon further review, the department has decided not to present her with the award" as American officials "didn't consider some of the public statements that she had made appropriate. They didn't comport with our values" while adding that "There were obviously some problems in our review process, and we're going to do some forensics on how that happened."