Abolhassan Banisadr
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Abolhassan Banisadr (born March 22, 1933) was the first elected President of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Banisadr had participated in the anti-Shah student movement during the early 1960s, was imprisoned twice, and was wounded during an uprising in 1963. He then fled to France and joined the Iranian resistance group led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Banisadr returned to Iran together with Khomeini as the revolution was beginning in February 1979. He was the deputy economy and finance minister and acting foreign minister briefly during 1979, and the finance minister from 1979 to 1980.
He was elected President in early 1980, when he ran in a competitive election against Ahmad Madani, Hassan Habibi, Sadegh Tabatabaee, Dariush Forouhar, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, Kazem Sami, Mohammad Makri, Hassan Ghafourifard, and Hassan Ayat.
Banisadr was not an Islamic cleric: Ayatollah Khomeini had insisted that clerics should not run for positions in the government. In August and September, 1980, Banisadr survived two helicopter crashes near the Iranian border with Iraq.
Banisadr soon had a falling-out with Ayatollah Khomeini, because of his opposition to the execution of dissidents. Banisadr sent Khomeini many letters, and warned against dictatorship. Thirdly, Banisadr's popularity was rising after 6 months of war which started because Saddam Hussein invaded Iran using Iraqi armies. Iraq, and some of the Persian Gulf region countries had agreed to pay reparation, about $60 Billion, and basically, agreed to all Iranian terms for stopping the war. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani argued that if they let Banisadr finish the war, he will sit on his tank, and march to Tehran, and not even Khomeini would be able to touch him. Accusing Banisadr of a weak performance in leading Iranian troops in the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini stripped the Presidency from holding the power of commander-in-chief and instead assigned it to his own office on June 10, 1980.
Banisadr was impeached on June 21, 1981 by the Iranian parliament, allegedly because of his moves against the clerics in power, most specifically Mohammad Beheshti, head of judicial system at the time. Ayatollah Khomeini appears to have instigated the impeachment, which he signed the next day, on June 22. Even before Ayatollah Khomeini had signed the impeachment papers, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps|Pasdaran had seized the presidential areas, and imprisoned newspaper writers which worked for a newspaper closely tied to Mr. Banisadr. In the next few days they also executed several of his closest friends, including Mr. Hossein Navab, Rashid Sadrolhefazi, and Manouchehr Massoudi. It was revealed later, that the group who were tasked to capture Mr. Banisadr, were told to finish him off, even before he gets to the jail. However, Banisadr managed to flee the country. Banisadr fled to France along with Masoud Radjavi, leader of Mojahedin, where (as of 2005) he still lives, and has published many articles about Iran.
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