The late President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi was named Butcher of Tehran after the 1988 mass execution of Iranian prisoners while he was still serving at the Judiciary.
The man with a brutal human rights record in the country served as the deputy head of Judiciary for 10 years before being appointed prosecutor in general in 2014.
Raisi unsuccessfully vied for presidency in 2017, losing to Rouhani who had 57% votes against him with 38.3% of the votes.
He became the head of judiciary in 2019 and continued to criticize Rouhani’s government.
He again ran for presidency in the 2021 general election and won by 62.9% after most of his contenders were disqualified and voters’ turnout was below 50%.
Ealy Life and Career of Raisi Ebrahim
Raisi was born on December 14, 1960, and grew up in the city of Mashhad, an Iconic religious Centre for the burial place of the eight Imam.
He received religious education from a seminary in Qom, where he studied under prominent clerics.
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Rais later became a prosecutor after undergoing training in administration during the 1978-79 Iranian Revolutionary Regime which he took part in.
After 6 years, he became Deputy prosecutor in the country’s capital Teheran.
It was after Ali Khamenei became the president of Iran when Rais began attaining senior ranks within Iran’s Judicial System.
His most prominent positions included Head of the General Inspection Organization and prosecutor General of the special court for the clergy in 2o12 up to 20221.
Ebrahim Raisi Political Key Roles
Raisi also became a member of the Assembly of Experts in 2007 a deliberate body tasked with replacing the Rahbar if the office becomes vacant.
He also played a key role in the crackdown on dissidents after the unrest that followed the 2009 presidential election.
In 2016 Khamenei appointed Raisi custodian of the shrine in Mashhad, placing him in charge of Iran’s largest bonyad- a charitable trust.
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The appointment, which lasted until 2019, placed billions of dollars’ worth of assets and a sizable chunk of Iran’s gross domestic product—under Raisi’s control and without formal oversight.
During Iran-Iraq war he appeared in the ‘Death-panel’, a set of four Judges who sentenced to death, thousands of Iranian prisoners during the purge of 1988.
The prisoners were accused of collaborating with Iraq military.
Ebrahim Rais is the first president in history of Iran to launch a direct attack on Israel. He Launched 120 ballistic missiles, 170 drones and more than 30 cruise missiles claiming it was in retaliation following an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus.
However, Israel Military declared only minor damage occurred after it intercepted most of the drones and the missiles with the help of the US.
President Raisi Dies
President Ebrahim Raisi died on May 19, 2024, following a helicopter crash.
The helicopter, carrying Raisi and eight others, crashed in the remote, mountainous East Azerbaijan Province on Sunday.
Mohammad Mokhiber, the first vice-president of the republic will now take over with the confirmation of supreme leader who has the final say in all matters of state in Iran.
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