Word: ayatullah
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...including businessmen and news commentators as well as generals and politicians who served the old regime-have been executed by Iran's revolutionary tribunals, which pay little attention to such legal niceties as providing counsel for the accused. Last week the spiritual leader of Iran's revolution, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, belatedly took action to curb the killings. Khomeini issued an edict limiting the death sentence to those found guilty of murder, torture leading to death or the ordering of a massacre...
Khomeini's reprieve could spare many of the 1,500 political prisoners now awaiting trial at Tehran's Qasr prison. It might also mollify some Shi'ite leaders, including Ayatullah Sharietmadari, who believe that the tribunals should be more selective in their pursuit of revenge against the followers of the toppled Shah. But there will be no mercy for the Shah himself. Speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally, Ayatullah Sadegh Khalkhali, head of Tehran's revolutionary court, issued a worldwide murder contract for the exiled monarch, several members of his family and his closest advisers. "Anyone...
Wherever the Shah ends up, there will be fewer Iranian newspapers around to report it. Apparently angered by an article about Forghan, a terrorist group that last month killed a member of Iran's ruling Islamic Revolutionary Council, the Ayatullah Khomeini declared that he would never again read Ayandegan, Tehran's leading morning daily (circ. 400,000). After thousands of rock-throwing demonstrators massed at the paper's office, editors published a farewell issue consisting of a front-page editorial and three blank pages. Said the editorial: "Until the government clarifies its position regarding the press...
Demonstrations have virtually ceased while the bewildered students anxiously wait, along with the rest of the world, to see what will happen next in their turbulent homeland. The uncertain Bazargan government, at odds with Iran's revolutionary committees and subject to the Delphic dictates of the Ayatullah Khomeini, is not exactly what the youths had in mind when they called for a new regime...
...Southern California, Said Djabbari, 21, wanted to go back but now has misgivings. "The previous government wielded an iron fist in a velvet glove," he says. "This new regime doesn't give a damn about the glove." Adds a social science student at the University of Kansas: "The Ayatullah sounds exactly like the Shah. Previously, if I opposed the government, I was opposing the Shah. Now they tell me I'm opposing...