Word: ayatullah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...supporters. In the wake of nationwide riots between pro-and anti-Banisadr crowds, squads of Islamic Revolutionary Guards searched the homes of Iranians suspected of harboring the leader of the country's moderates, who had been Iran's President for the past 17 months. Banisadr vanished after Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini dismissed him as chief of the armed forces three weeks ago. Since then, the government has charged Banisadr with unspecified "antirevolutionary and anti-Islamic acts," thus clearing the way for a presidential election next month...
Their crime was that they had demonstrated against the dismissal of Banisadr from his post as President of the nation. The Islamic judge who sentenced them-Ayatullah Mohammadi Gilani-did not even know who they were. The twelve girls, the oldest 18, the others under 16, refused to identify themselves in court. When Gilani asked their names, each in turn replied, "Mujahed" (Crusader). To the question "Child of?" each replied, "The people of Iran." Gilani solved the problem of identifying the girls by having them photographed. Then he consigned them to the firing squad...
Presiding over this reign of terror was a three-man presidential council, which took power after Khomeini ousted Banisadr. The council's chief member, Supreme Court President Ayatullah Mohammed Beheshti, has gradually emerged as the strongest of the three, by virtue of his leadership of the clergy-controlled Islamic Republic Party (I.R.P.), the dominant political party in Iran. The other council members were Parliamentary Speaker Hojatolislam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Raja'i, who has assumed Banisadr's presidential functions until the July elections, when an I.R.P. candidate is expected...
...dash all hopes of combining modernism with Islam in Iran, which had been the idealistic and forlorn plan of Banisadr. For the fundamentalists, the Paris-educated economist who became President represented a suspiciously Western, secular influence in the revolutionary government. It made no difference that his father, the late Ayatullah Seyed Nasrollah Banisadr, had been an Islamic leader revered by Khomeini. Supporting the suspicions about the deposed President, Khomeini declared last week, "Banisadr and his ilk are Muslims, but their Islam somehow leaves room for U.S. domination." He also charged that Banisadr had urged him "to cashier the government...
...time, mobs were however, on the President march again. Abolhassan Banisadr was the target of their wrath. While demonstrators cried, "Death to the second Shah!" the Iranian parliament, dominated by Muslim fundamentalists, voted by an overwhelming majority to impeach Banisadr for "incompetence." His fate is now up to the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Meanwhile, as his own supporters met the mobs in bloody combat, Banisadr dropped out of sight, and border and airport police were on the alert to prevent him from fleeing...