April 28 – A high ranking Iranian cleric was shot and killed in Iran’s Mazandaran province, while visiting a bank in the area. State media reported that the attacker fired shots at the cleric’s back before being disarmed by uniformed men.
Ayatollah Abbasali Soleimani was a member of the Assembly of Experts, a powerful body which appoints the country’s Supreme Leader, and also has the power to monitor or remove the leader.
Soleimani also served as Ayatollah Khamenei’s personal representative and was considered to be a hardliner favoring separate public spaces for men and women. The motive for the killing remains unclear.
The death sentence for detained German-Iranian Jamshid Shahrmad was upheld by Iran’s judiciary this week, following a conviction for “corruption on earth.”
The government had accused Shahrmad of leading a pro-monarchist group accused of a deadly 2008 bomb attack in Iran, a charge he has always denied.
The decision was called “unacceptable” by the German government which added that Shahrmad had not been given a fair trial.
And the daughter of Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian-American with British citizenship detained in Iran, said she had lost faith in US President Joe Biden’s efforts to free her father.
Tara Tahbaz told Reuters that she had not seen any action to secure her father’s release, who has already served five years of a 10-year sentence following a conviction for spying.
The US State Department called on Iran’s government to release Tahbaz and several other foreign nationals on April 22, accusing officials of using the detainees as “political leverage” for the regime’s own ends.
