Caliphate.' In 2002, 26 men including three British nationals were arrested and convicted in 2004 for being members of HT and for 'attempting to revive' the party in Egypt. In general, however, party support in Egypt remains weak when compared to competing Islamist groups, such as the MB. According to Amnesty, four Muslim Britons and several Egyptians were tortured in Egypt for suspected affiliation with Hizb ut-Tahrir. Eventually 26 were put on trial for what observers in Egypt considered "contradictory" and "weak" charges. Iraq In 1969, when the son of Iraq's highest Shia Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim was arrested and allegedly tortured, during widespread persecution of Shia, Abd al-Aziz al-Badri, a Sunni Islamic lawyer (Alim) and local Hizb ut-Tahrir leader, criticised the regime, and was killed under torture. A Sunni member of Hizb ut-Tahrir is thus seen as the first martyr for the rights of Shia in Iraq, against the old Ba'athist regime. Saddam Hussein repressed HT members in Iraq in 1990, but when his army invaded Kuwait in 1990, like many Islamist and grassroots Muslim groups, HT saw the annexation as an act of unifying ‘Islamic lands’ and was enthusiastic. Farid Kassim, HTB's first deputy leader and spokesperson at the time stated, "From the Islam point of view, it is correct that any border should be removed, we are described in the Koran as one nation. The borders were not put there by Muslims, but by Europeans." British HT members gathered outside London Central Mosque in Regent's Park in an attempt to persuade others to join what they termed as Saddam's jihad. Party representatives also went to the Iraqi Embassy in London to ask Saddam to announce himself as Caliph. Not withstanding this support, 11 HT members were executed in Iraq in 1990 for calling on Saddam to abandon Ba'athism and to adopt an Islamist state. After Saddam's removal in 2003, HT announced it would be opening an Iraqi branch. One HT member in Iraq, Abu Abdullah Al-Kurdi, claimed in a 2008 interview that the party has two offices in Baghdad, which American forces allegedly bombed, killing one HT activist. In the civil war that followed the US invasion, HT has called for Sunni, Shia, Arab and Kurdish citizens to unite. Two prominent HT members (Adel Al-Rammah and Ahmad Sadoon Al-Ubayde) were reportedly murdered there in 2006, their bodies showing signs of torture. Regarding the hanging of former president of