Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei today oversaw congregational prayers for the late President Ebrahim Raisi and others, as funeral rites continued in Tehran.
In a rare public appearance, the 85-year-old head of the Iranian State led prayers in the capital before tens of thousands of mourners.
“Oh Allah, we didn’t see anything but good from him,” Khamenei said as he paid tribute to Raisi at the University of Tehran.
Amid tight security, the caskets of Raisi, who was 63, and the seven others who died in the crash on Sunday, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, were draped in Iranian flags with their pictures on them.
On a day declared a public holiday as the nation mourned, visiting foreign delegations, including from Jordan and Oman, joined the procession through the Iranian capital, paying tribute to Raisi and the other officials.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also travelled to Tehran, as did Belarus’s Foreign Minister Sergei Aleinik.
Hardliner Mr Raisi and his Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, both died when their US-made Bell 212 helicopter came down in atrocious weather in the country’s mountainous northwest region as the pair were flying back to the country’s capital Tehran on Sunday night.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Tehran to mourn President Raisi, after a similar event a day earlier in Tabriz.
But it is known that many did not support his hardline ways and Iranian authorities have threatened dissenters posting celebrations on social media with immediate arrest.
And the period of mourning is expected be a test for Iran’s conservative leaders who want to send out a clear and convincing signal of continuity.
Raisi’s body will now be transferred tomorrow (Thurs) to Birjand, the capital of South Khorasan province, where the president had recently been re-elected as representative to the leadership watchdog body Assembly of Experts.
His final burial ceremony will then be held in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, in the shrine of the eighth Shia Imam Reza later that evening.
While Raisi was loved by hardliners of the Islamic Republic of Iran, he was equally hated by many Iranians for his role in the mass execution of political prisoners in the 1980s,
He was also despised his enemies for his more than four-decade involvement in the security and judicial systems which suppress opponents of the Islamic regime.
In the 1980s, Raisi was appointed to be a member of a death committee that dealt with political prisoners.
More than 5,000 political prisoners were executed by this committee.
Relatives of those executed long held onto hope that Raisi would one day face justice.