IRAN’S FIRST PRESIDENT ABOLHASSAN BANISADR DIES IN PARIS

Sat 09 October 2021:

Abolhassan Banisadr, Iran’s first president following the 1979 Islamic revolution, died in a Paris hospital on Saturday at the age of 88, according to the official news agency IRNA.

“After a long illness, Abolhassan Banisadr died on Saturday at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in southeast Paris, IRNA reported, citing a source close to the former president.

On Bani Sadr’s official website, his wife and children stated that he died in hospital after a long illness.

In announcing the death, his family said on his website that Bani-Sadr had “defended freedom in the face of new tyranny and oppression in the name of religion.”

Bani sadr was elected president in January 1980, shortly after the Islamic revolution of the previous year.

However, after opposing late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he was dismissed by the Iranian parliament in 1981. He had been living in exile in France since then.

He was an activist in the ranks of the National Front of Iran, the movement of nationalist leader Mohammad Mossadegh, from the age of 17 and was a practicing Muslim.

Banisadr became a strong opponent of the Shah’s regime after studying theology, economics, and sociology.

He was forced to flee Iran in 1963 because he was wanted by the police, and he landed in Paris. He urged for the Iranian opposition to unite around Khomeini, who was exiled in Iraq, in 1970.

Khomeini moved to France in October 1978, and Banisadr became one of his closest companions and counselors.

The man at times referred to as “Khomeini’s spiritual son” was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran on January 26, 1980.

On February 1, 1979, Banisadr was on the plane that brought Khomeini back to Iran.

In an interview with Reuters in 2019, the former president said that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had betrayed the principles of the revolution after sweeping to power in 1979, adding this had left a “very bitter” taste among some of those who had returned with him to Tehran in triumph.

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