Iran’s former judiciary chief Mohammad Yazdi, an ultra-conservative, died on Wednesday aged 89, the official IRNA state news agency reports.
A student of the Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, Yazdi died due to “illnesses of the digestive system,” IRNA says.
He had been named head of Iran’s judicial authority in 1989, a little after the country’s current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, took the helm.
Iran’s former judiciary chief Mohammad Yazdi attends a session of the Assembly of Experts in the capital Tehran on March 10, 2015, before being appointed as the new head of the Assembly. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP)
Yazdi headed the judiciary for a decade, before he was replaced in the wake of student protests in the summer of 1999.
Reformist media had demanded his departure, criticizing a series of trials against individuals close to then-president Mohammad Khatami that it decried as politically motivated.
A longstanding member of the Assembly of Experts — a body tasked with appointing the supreme leader — Yazdi served as its president in 2015.
— AFP
Help us report truthfully on social media
As a multimedia journalist, my job is to take the quality, fact-based journalism produced by The Times of Israel newsroom and make it accessible across every platform — from Instagram posts to podcasts to short-form videos.
This is how many, especially young people, consume news these days. But misinformation is rampant on social media. Our team at ToI produces accurate, responsible short-form reporting on Israel and the Jewish world.
If you believe in the importance of factual social media journalism, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to sustain responsible multimedia reporting.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
