Who is Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president

Ebrahim Raisi is the abbreviation of the full name Sayyid Ebrahim Raisol-Sadati. From 18 June 2021 it is Iranian president, the thirteenth in the history of the Islamic Republic which began in 1979. In parallel with his political career he had one in the judiciary until he reached the head of the judicial system. Of conservative ideology, he won the presidential elections in the first round with 62% of the votes, succeeding Hassan Rouhani.

Born on 14 December 1960 (in 1959 according to other sources) he is originally from Mashhad, the Shiite holy city in the north-east of the country. His father, Seyed Haji, died when Ebrahim was only 5 years old. His religious education took place in his hometown, where he directed, from 2016 to 2019, the economic-religious foundation of the Imam Reza sanctuary, therefore in the holy city of Qom.

Graduated in Islamic Law from Motahari University of Tehran, according to the Treccani encyclopedia, he was prosecutor of Karaj (1981), then of Tehran (1989-94), head of the National Inspection Office (1994-2004), vice president of the Supreme Court of Iran (2004-2014) and Attorney General of Iran (2014-16), finally President of the Supreme Court since March 2019.

Nineteen years old at the time of the revolution he was among the supporters of Khomeini and then the dolphin of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He has always been close to the leaders of the Pasdaran.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)-/Getty Images

The Association of Iranian Democratic Women in Italy says that at the age of 20, the then revolutionary prosecutor, Ali Qoddusi, appointed Ebrahim Raisi as Karaj's prosecutor. «After a few months and after countless crimes in Karaj, Ebrahim Raisi was appointed prosecutor of Hamedan, while simultaneously maintaining his position in Karaj. Thousands of political prisoners were tortured and executed in both prisons when Raisi was the prosecutor».

In the summer of 1988 he was part of the so-called commission of death, created to evaluate the cases of several thousand political prisoners who had been in prison for years with prison sentences. At least 3,000 prisoners would have been executed without trial, but other sources speculate that it was 30,000. On the fortieth anniversary of the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran in November 2019, the US Treasury included Raisi in the list of Iranian officials subject to sanctions due to human rights violations and Amnesty International yesterday called for investigations to be launched against of him.

As a presidential candidate already in 2017 he had focused on fight against corruption. He was defeated by the reformist Hassan Rouhani who said in a TV debate: “Iranians will not accept those who have hanged and imprisoned people for the last 38 years.” In the subsequent elections the majority was conservative and he, married to the daughter of the leader of the Friday prayers of Mashhad and the Imam Reza shrine, became the Iranian president and seemed destined to succeed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei . During his presidency, in 2022, protests over the killing of Mahsa Amini and the resulting repression.

On Sunday 19 May 2024 the helicopter on which he was traveling with the Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and two other officials made an emergency landing in an area bordering Azerbaijan. The searches were immediate. State TV talks about problems related to the weather.

Source: Vanity Fair

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