Hard-line judiciary chief, ex-speaker register to run
Dubai: The hard-line cleric in charge of Iran's judiciary who also took part in a panel involved in the mass execution of thousands of prisoners in 1988 registered Saturday to run against for the country's presidency.
Ebrahim Raisi has been named as a possible successor to Iran's 82-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leading some to suggest he wouldn't run in the race.
However, his registration shows he still has interest in the office he failed to obtain in 2017.
His close ties to Khamenei and popularity in part from his televised anti-corruption campaign could make him a favourite in an election in which analysts already believe that hard-liners enjoy an edge. A crush of journalists followed Raisi through the Interior Ministry as he registered, the 60-year-old cleric waving to staffers as he passed.
In a statement just before his registration, Raisi promised to fight poverty and corruption, humiliation and discrimination if he becomes president. He added his tenure in office would seek to have a popular administration for a powerful Iran, a dig at Iran's current president, the relatively moderate Hassan Rouhani.
Activists, however, hold a far different view of Raisi over his involvement in the 1988 mass execution of prisoners at the end of Iran's long war with Iraq. After Iran's then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a UN-brokered cease-fire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, heavily armed by Saddam Hussein, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack.
Iran ultimately blunted their assault, but the attack set the stage for the sham retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that would become known as death commissions.
Some who appeared were asked to identify themselves. Those who responded mujahedeen were sent to their deaths, while others were questioned about their willingness to clear minefields for the army of the Islamic Republic, according to a 1990 Amnesty International report.
International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed, while the MEK puts the number at 30,000.
Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, apparently carried out on Khomeini's orders, though some argue that other top officials were effectively in charge in the months before his 1989 death. Raisi reportedly served on a panel involved in sentencing the prisoners to death.
Meanwhile, A former speaker of Iran's parliament registered Saturday to run in the Islamic Republic's upcoming presidential election, becoming the first high-profile candidate to potentially back the policies of the outgoing administration that reached Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
The decision by Ali Larijani, long a prominent conservative voice who later allied himself with Iran's relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani, came on the last day of registration for the June 18 election. While a panel overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ultimately will approve candidates, Larijani has maintained close ties to the cleric over his decades in government.
Journalists in Tehran watched Larijani, 63, register at the Interior Ministry, which oversees elections. He waved to onlookers after completing the process, his face covered by a blue surgical mask as Iran continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic.
Larijani, a former commander in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, previously served as the minister of culture and Islamic guidance and as the head of Iran's state broadcaster. Under hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he served as secretary of Iran's powerful Supreme National Security Council for two years, and as a senior nuclear negotiator. He later became speaker of the Iranian parliament for some 12 years, stepping down in
May 2020.
