Ebrahim Raisí, from “hanging judge” to guardian of the essences of the Islamic Republic of Iran | International | EUROtoday

The pictures of among the not less than 5,000 political prisoners that the Iranian authorities ordered executed in the summertime of 1988 appear like these on a university commencement certificates. In the report Secrets soaked in blood, which Amnesty International launched greater than 20 years later about that bloodbath, many of those photos present faces of twenty-somethings, women and men, but additionally the faces of youngsters. Those 1000’s of Iranians have been executed that summer season in Iran after which buried in mass graves, after a fee of 4 followers of the Islamic regime ordered their deaths. According to quite a few witnesses, a kind of 4 males was Ebrahim Raisí, president of Iran since 2021, who died this Sunday in a helicopter accident in a mountainous space close to Varzeqan, within the northwest of the nation.

The occasions of that now distant 1988 earned Raisí the fame of being a straightforward gallows Justice of the Peace, what is thought in Iran as a “hanging judge.” That shame by no means left him within the eyes of many Iranians, who noticed in him a brake on change, a guardian of the ultra-conservative orthodoxy of the Iranian Islamic regime, whose biggest exponent is the supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That tendency, that of the so-called “principalists”, is what now controls virtually all of the levers of energy in Iran. Those who oppose any Western affect in Iran are energetic in it, they advocate imposing blind obedience to the supreme chief and shifting in direction of an all-out Islamic society, ruled by the theocratic precept of Velayat-e Faqih, or authorities of the clerics.

Faithful servant of the regime

The biography of this jurist, the article of ridicule for his lack of eloquence and of whom it isn’t even identified that he really had larger research in Jurisprudence, as he claimed, was from his youth that of a devoted servant of the Islamic regime established in Iran in 1979, when Raisí was 18 years previous. Born in Mashad, about 850 kilometers east of Tehran, 63 years in the past, married with two kids, he studied on the Qom seminary, a non secular establishment from which many hierarchs of the Islamic Republic have emerged. His profession as a priest was boosted by his standing as a sayeddirect descendant of the prophet Muhammad.

In Qom, Raisí obtained lessons from a number of ideologues of the present Iranian regime. In 1981, on the age of 20, he was appointed prosecutor. He had not but turned 30 when he participated, as deputy prosecutor of Tehran, within the fee that ordered 1000’s of opponents to be hanged, in accordance with Amnesty International and quite a few witnesses. His profession was all the time on the rise. Between 2004 and 2006, he served as vp of the Supreme Court and, between 2014 and 2016, he served as legal professional common.

His profession took one other step when, in 2017, he ran for president for the primary time. He was defeated by the average Hasan Rohaní, however, from that second, the ability equipment started to organize his arrival to the second political Justice of the Peace of the nation. Meanwhile, in 2019, Raisí was appointed head of the judiciary. Finally, in 2021, the omnipotent Guardian Council, a physique essentially managed by the supreme chief, cleared its approach to the presidency by vetoing 600 candidates for the elections. All the moderates, besides one, who additionally ended up resigning, have been dominated out. In the top, solely three minor candidates competed within the presidential elections with out competitors, tailor-made to Raisí.

His victory in these June 2021 elections was the fruits of his profession, however that victory confirmed the holes within the regime. He solely acquired the votes of a 3rd of the voters. The turnout, at 48%, was the bottom within the historical past of the Islamic Republic, which used to file turnout knowledge of over 70%. Furthermore, nearly 13% of those that voted did so clean. This horrible determine in a rustic through which many staff – for instance, civil servants – are pressured to vote demonstrated the disaster of legitimacy that the regime was dragging on, particularly since Raisí's identify was already being heard as a favourite to succeed the octogenarian chief. supreme, Ali Khamenei.

The Ayatollah and Raisí, his right-hand man, confirmed their immobility, their resistance to the change desired by a big a part of the inhabitants, when a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Yina Amini, died in police custody on September 16, 2022, three days later. of being arrested in Tehran for sporting her veil incorrectly. Her response to the demonstrations unleashed by Amini's dying was a repression that for the UN Independent Mission for Iran included the fee of crimes towards humanity. In it, not less than 550 Iranians died by the hands of paramilitaries and safety forces and 60,000 Iranians have been detained for collaborating in that widespread cry whose motto was and is “Woman, life and freedom.” At least 9 males have been hanged for his or her hyperlinks to the protests, one among them in public. When, after these deaths, the protests quieted down, Raisí's identify not sounded a lot like Khamenei's dolphin.

At the celebrations for the forty fourth anniversary of the Islamic Republic, on February 11, 2023, Raisi alluded in a speech to the demonstrations, which he referred to as “riots,” and boasted of the “defeat of Iran's enemies.” In the next months, the president introduced new measures to impose the veil on the 1000’s of Iranians who, since Amini's dying, have eliminated them as a gesture of civil disobedience. Many Iranians haven’t forgotten that Raisi was thought of a “hanging judge.” Under his presidency, executioners in Iran labored at a frenetic tempo. In the 5 months since 2024, Iran has executed not less than 226 individuals, a couple of a day, in accordance with the exile NGO Iran Human Rights. The Iranian regime can be the biggest executioner of girls on the planet: 10 thus far this yr.

This Sunday, after the announcement of the disappearance of the presidential helicopter and the official media's request for Iranians to wish for Raisí, movies have been broadcast of individuals praying for his life. At the identical time, social networks have been stuffed “with mockery and memes” from exiles and even residents nonetheless contained in the nation who celebrated the disappearance of the president, explains Spanish-Iranian activist Ryma Sheermohammadi. In a tweet, two exiled Iranian women seem toasting with beer and with out veils on the icon of a helicopter. They are the daughters of Minoo Majidi, one of many victims of the repression of the “Women, Life and Freedom” motion.

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