Department of International Relations, University of Sussex

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD) in London, and an Associate Tutor in the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton. He is the bestselling author of The War on Freedom: How & Why America was Attacked: September 11, 2001, which won him the Naples Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, in 2003. The War on Freedom (2002), the first book to critique the official narrative of 9/11, was described by Gore Vidal in the London Observer as “the best, most balanced, analysis of 9/11”.

One of the world’s foremost authorities in terrorism and conflict analysis, in July 2005 he testified as an expert witness at a special all-day Congressional hearing on 9/11 and international terrorism sponsored by Hon. Reps. Cynthia McKinney and Raul Grijalva. He has written and reported for the Independent on Sunday, Raw Story, Counterpunch, ZNet, Dissident Voice, OpEd News, Online Journal, Media Monitors Network, The American Muslim, The Muslim News, Q News, and many other publications. He has been a regular political commentator on BBC Southern Counties Radio in Sussex, and has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows around the world, including BBC World Today, Channel 4, former Daily Express journalist Yvonne Ridley’s “Agenda” on the Islam Channel, PBS Foreign Exchange with Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria, Pacifica Radio, David Barsamian’s Alternative Radio, and so on.

Nafeez’s other books include Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (2003); The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (2005) and The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (2006), which has been profiled in the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Times. His writings have received critical acclaim from many leading journalists and academics, including Gore Vidal, John Pilger, Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva, Andre Gunder Frank, Johan Galtung, Robert W. McChesney, Robert Jensen, Peter Dale Scott, Brian Appleyard, among others.

Nafeez worked for two years as Senior Researcher at the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in London, a leading human rights group with UN consultative status specializing in human rights violations in the Muslim world. There he authored IHRC Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, before moving to Brighton where he founded the IPRD in early 2001.

At the University of Sussex, he teaches courses in political theory, international relations and contemporary history. As a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of International Relations, Nafeez is currently doing interdisciplinary research on genocide, imperialism and structural violence, and has published in many peer-reviewed journals. His work in human rights and foreign policy has been recommended by leading academic institutions and is used in university courses, including the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University, the Department of Communication at California State University, the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah, the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, among many others.