A senior Iranian cleric, a member of the Assembly of Experts that chooses Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was shot dead Wednesday morning at a bank in northern Iran, according to local media reports. An armed man against Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani, former representative of the top leader of the Islamic Republic in the province of Sistan Balochistan, in the northern city of Babolsar, the Mehr agency reported.
The 76-year-old priest later died in a hospital as a result of being shot by the assailant, who has been detained by the authorities, who have not disclosed his identity or the motives for the murder.
Soleimani was a member of the important Assembly of Experts, made up of 88 clerics, which has the prerogative of appointing the supreme leader, supervising his performance and, in theory, dismissing him if he is deemed incapable of carrying out his duties. They are elected every eight years by direct universal suffrage from a pool of candidates approved by the Guardian Council.
Soleimani also led Friday prayers in Kashan, a central city between Tehran and Isfahan, and in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan Balochistan, a southeastern region populated partly by Sunni Muslims (Iran is a predominantly Shiite country).
The Sistan Balochistan region has a majority Sunni population and extremist groups of that branch of Islam that oppose the Shiite government of Tehran operate there, as well as gangs of smugglers and drug traffickers. This province has experienced some of the most intense protests provoked in the country by the death in September in police custody of the student Mahsa Amin for wearing the veil incorrectly according to the dress code of the Iranian regime.
