On this picture launched by the Iranian Presidential Workplace, President Ebrahim Raisi attends a gathering along with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in the course of the inauguration ceremony of the Qiz Qalasi Dam, or Lady’s Fortress in Azeri, on the border between Iran and Azerbaijan, on Could 19. , 2024 | Picture credit score: AP
Iran’s hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, has lengthy been seen as a protégé of Iran’s supreme chief and a possible successor to his place inside the nation’s Shiite theocracy.
Information that his helicopter made what state media described as a “crash touchdown” on Could 19 instantly introduced new consideration to the chief, who already faces sanctions from the US and different nations for his function within the mass execution of prisoners. in 1988.
Raisi, 63, beforehand headed Iran’s judiciary. He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2017 in opposition to Hassan Rouhani, the comparatively reasonable cleric who, as president, reached Tehran’s nuclear cope with world powers in 2015.
In 2021, Raisi ran once more in an election by which all of his probably outstanding opponents have been banned from working underneath Iran’s vetting system. He gained practically 62% of the 28.9 million votes, the bottom proportion share within the historical past of the Islamic Republic. Thousands and thousands of individuals stayed house and others canceled their votes.
Raisi was defiant when requested at a information convention after his election concerning the 1988 executions, which noticed false retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that might turn out to be generally known as “demise commissions” finish of the bloody warfare between Iran and Iraq.
After Iran’s then-Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a UN-brokered ceasefire, members of Saddam Hussein’s closely armed Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq stormed throughout the Iranian border. from Iraq in a shock assault. Iran mitigated its assault.
Trials started round that point and the defendants have been requested to determine themselves. Those that responded as “mujahideen” have been despatched to their deaths, whereas others have been interrogated about their willingness to “clear minefields for the military of the Islamic Republic,” in keeping with a 1990 Amnesty Worldwide report. Worldwide rights teams Human consultants estimate that about 5,000 individuals have been executed. Raisi was a part of the commissions.
In 2019, the US Treasury sanctioned Raisi “for his administrative oversight of the executions of individuals who have been minors on the time of the crime and of the torture and different merciless, inhuman or degrading remedy or punishment of prisoners in Iran, together with amputations.” She additionally talked about his participation within the 1988 executions.
Iran is in the end ruled by its supreme chief, 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However as president, Raisi supported the nation’s enrichment of uranium to close weapons-grade ranges, in addition to hindering worldwide inspectors as a part of his confrontation with the West.
Raisi additionally supported the assault on Israel in a large assault in April by which greater than 300 drones and missiles have been fired on the nation in response to an alleged Israeli assault that killed Iranian generals on the nation’s embassy compound in Damascus, Syria, which in itself constitutes an extension of a years-long shadow warfare between the 2 nations.
He additionally supported the nation’s safety providers as they cracked down on all dissent, even after the demise of Mahsa Amini in 2022 and the nationwide protests that adopted.
The months-long safety crackdown killed greater than 500 individuals and detained greater than 22,000. In March, a United Nations investigative panel discovered that Iran was accountable for the “bodily violence” that led to Amini’s demise after she was arrested for not sporting a hijab, or headband, as girls favored. authorities.