Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash

In August 2005 the American Association for the Advancement of Science called for Ammash to be either sent to trial or released:

Both women were released in December 2005 after they were among those an American-Iraqi board process found were no longer a security threat and would have no charges filed against them. Robert Scheer decried her demonization by the mainstream American media.

Ammash surrendered to coalition forces on May 9, 2003 and was one of two Iraqi women known to be in U.S. custody as of April 2005. The other was the British-educated Dr. Rihab Taha, who led Iraq's biological weapons program until 1995.

She was appointed to the Revolutionary Command Council in May 2001. In one of several videos that Saddam released during the war, Ammash was the only woman among about a half-dozen men seated around a table. The videos were broadcast on Iraqi TV as invading forces drew closer to Baghdad: it is not known when the meeting took place or what the significance was of her appearance on camera.

She conducted research into illnesses that may have been caused by depleted uranium from shells used in the 1991 Gulf War, and had published several papers on the health effects of the war and the subsequent sanctions. She was also said to be suffering from breast cancer.

She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Baghdad, followed by a Masters in microbiology from Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas. She spent four years at the University of Missouri in pursuit of her doctorate in microbiology, which she received in December 1983. Her thesis focused on the effects of radiation, paraquat and the chemotherapy drug Adriamycin, on bacteria and mammals.

Ammash's father, Salih Mahdi Ammash, was a high-level Baath Party member in Iraq, who became defense minister in 1963, deputy prime minister in 1968, and an ambassador in 1977.