Member of the Iranian Council of Experts Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani assassinated in an attack in northern Iran carried out by a gunman who was arrested
A member of the Iranian Council of Experts, responsible for appointing the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, was killed in an attack in northern Iran by an arrested gunman, the official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday.
Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani was one of the 88 members of the Assembly of Experts responsible for appointing the Supreme Leader, the country’s highest authority.
Ayatollah Soleimani was assassinated on Wednesday morning in an armed attack in Babelser, a town on the Caspian Sea, 230 km north of Tehran, and the attacker was arrested by the security forces.
Ayatollah Soleimani held the position of representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and imam of Friday prayers in Kashan, a city in the center of the country between Tehran and Isfahan, and in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan, a region in the southeast that includes Sunni Muslims.
The Iranian Assembly of Experts of which he was a member is a body of 88 clerics elected for eight-year terms by direct universal suffrage from a pool of candidates approved by the Guardian Council.
He’s responsible for appointing the Supreme Leader and supervising his work, and has the constitutional right to remove him and appoint a new person if he deems it necessary.
On April 2022, an attack carried out by suspected jihadists in the holy city of Mashhad, northeast, killed two Shiite clerics.
