Shami Chakrabarti Shami Chakrabarti Sharmishta Chakrabarti, Baroness Chakrabarti, (born 16 June 1969), commonly known as Shami Chakrabarti, is a British Labour Party politician and member of the House of Lords. She is a barrister, and was the director of Liberty, an advocacy group which promotes civil liberties and human rights, from 2003 to 2016. Chakrabarti was born in the London Borough of Harrow, and studied Law at the London School of Economics. After graduating, she was called to the Bar and then worked as an in-house legal counsel for the Home Office. When she was the director of Liberty, she campaigned against
Abu Anas al-Shami late 1990s, the Jordanian officials shut down an Islamic center that al-Shami had established in Amman on the grounds that it was promoting an extreme interpretation of Islam. In 2003, al-Shami joined al-Tawheed wal-Jihad leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in north-eastern Iraq. He was appointed to the advisory council of the group and soon became Zarqawi's second in command. He was both spiritual advisor to the group and directed many of its attacks and battles against American and Iraqi forces. In a letter he wrote that his 300 "mujaheddin" had fought-off over 2,000 U.S. Marines in the First Battle of Fallujah.