Mohammed Mahdi al-Bayati

Mohammed Mahdi Ameen al-Bayati (b. 1962) is an Iraqi politician who was Minister of Human Rights from 9 September 2014 to 16 August 2015. He is of Shi'a Turkomen descent from the northern Iraqi town of Amirli. He is a leading member of the Badr Organization, a Shi'ite militia that opposed the government of Saddam Hussein from exile in Iran.

He was elected to the Council of Representatives of Iraq in December 2005 as part of the National Iraqi Alliance, a pan-Shiite list that won a plurality of the seats in the election. He was allocated a seat as a representative of the Badr Organization. While serving as an MP, in 2007, his convoy was attacked as he travelled to Kirkuk, killing four of his relatives. He opposed the presence of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces in the disputed territories of Kirkuk, Mosul and Salah-ud-Din, saying it was "unconstitutional".

He was appointed Human Rights minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, which was confirmed by the Council of Representatives on 9 September 2014. He defended the record of the Iraqi government, denying that they had committed abuses against the Sunni Arab minority and describing the number of human rights violations committed by the Popular Mobilization Forces, Shiite volunteer militias forced to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as "tiny". He said the government had "little choice" but to rely on the militias as otherwise ISIL would have taken over the entire country. He asked the United Arab Emirates to remove the Badr Organisation and the Saraya Al-Salam, a militia from the Sadrist Movement, from their list of terrorist organisations.

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