TEHRAN: Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a fierce critic of Iran’s hard-line leadership who denounced June’s disputed election as fraudulent, has died at the age of 87.
The Parlemannews website said supporters of Montazeri, an architect of the 1979 revolution that toppled the US-backed shah, were flocking to Qom to attend his funeral on Monday.
The Tagheer website said pro-opposition Iranians were gathering in Tehran squares to mourn and said riot police were out in parts of Qom, where Montazeri lived and died.
His death from a heart attack, reported by official media on Sunday, coincides with tension rising once again in the country, six months after the presidential poll plunged the major oil producer into political crisis.
“My grandfather died in his sleep last night. People and friends are coming to express their condolences but there are no special security measures around our house,” Naser Montazeri said by telephone from Qom, 125 km south of Tehran.
Hundreds of Montazeri supporters took to the streets in his hometown of Najafabad, both mourning his loss and chanting slogans, video posted on the Internet showed. Shops in the town were closed and cloaked in black cloth pinned with Montazeri’s pictures. “Montazeri, congratulations on your freedom,” the crowd chanted, and “oppressed Montazeri, we will follow your path.”
Tagheer, the website of defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi, said Montazeri supporters were gathering in Tehran.
“The social network of the reform movement has called on its supporters to gather in Mohseni Square to mourn ... based on reports people have already gathered in some other squares in Tehran,” it said.
Montazeri was named in the 1980s to succeed revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran’s top authority, but fell out with him over the mass execution of prisoners.
