Thousands Attend Iran President’s Funeral Despite A Legacy Of Killings
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
JERUSALEM/TEHRAN (Worthy News) – Iran’s supreme leader has presided over a funeral attended by thousands for the country’s late president, foreign minister, and others killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led Islamic prayers at Tehran University, where caskets carrying the dead were draped in Iranian flags.
President Ebrahim Raisi died Sunday alongside Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and six others in a helicopter crash near the border with Azerbaijan.
Among those attending the funeral was Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, the group that Iran has armed and supported during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
He is widely considered Hamas’s overall leader and has been a prominent movement member since 1980. The U.S. Department of State designated him a terrorist in 2018, a view shared by Israel.
“I come in the name of the Palestinian people, in the name of the resistance factions of Gaza… to express our condolences,” Haniyeh said.
He also recalled meeting Raisi in Tehran during Ramadan, seen as a holy fasting month by Muslims.
He recalled he heard the president say that “the Palestinian issue” remains the key one of the Muslim world, which “must fulfill their obligations to the Palestinians to liberate their land.”
HAMAS PRAISED
He also claimed that Raisi praised Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel, which saw 1,200 people killed and 250 others taken hostage, an “earthquake in the heart of the Zionist entity.”
Under Raisi, hundreds of drones and missiles were launched towards Israel on April 13.
A few weeks later, Raisi died.
Authorities had warned against demonstrations against the funeral procession and insults posted online. “Oh Allah, we didn’t see anything but good from him,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in the standard prayer for the dead in Arabic.
That wasn’t the view of human rights activists who recall mass killings and viewed the 63-year-old as the ‘Butcher of Tehran.’
Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accused Raisi of having served on a four-man “death committee” that approved the executions of thousands of political prisoners, mostly suspected members of the outlawed rebel group the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, in 1988.
Raisi, seen before his death as a possible successor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, flatly denied personal involvement but praised the decision to go ahead with the executions.
UN INVESTIGATIONS
In September 2020, a group of seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote to the Iranian government, pressing for accountability over the killings, saying “the situation may amount to crimes against humanity.”
Raisi was promoted to Tehran chief prosecutor in 1989 and deputy head of the judiciary in 2004, a position he held for a decade, including during a crackdown on mass protests in 2009.
He became head of the judiciary in 2019 and president in 2021. In 2022, his administration implemented a harsh crackdown on women-led protests that left hundreds dead, according to rights investigators
An independent U.N. fact-finding mission earlier this year found that Raisi’s administration had committed crimes against humanity through its “violent repression” of protests and discrimination against women.
“Sympathy with him is an insult to his victims and the Iranian nation whose only regret is that he did not live long enough to see the fall of the Islamic republic and face trial for his crimes,” said Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s ousted shah and a leading opposition figure in the diaspora.
Recent weeks have seen Iranian authorities increase enforcement of the mandatory dress code for women, a primary focus of the 2022 protests, which were triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini following her arrest for an alleged breach.
Christians have also been targeted, with several remaining jailed for activities linked to their faith in Christ, Worthy News learned.
Despite concerns over his legacy, representatives of nearly 70 nations attended the funeral, state media reported.
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