Mourners take part in the funeral of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in Tehran, Iran, yesterday.
Dubai: Hundreds of thousands of Iranians massed in central Tehran yesterday for the funeral of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential figurehead of the Islamic Republic whose pragmatism led to a rift with Iran’s supreme leader.
Rafsanjani, who died on Sunday aged 82, was buried next to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 who founded its system of theocratic rule.
Rafsanjani’s policies of economic liberalisation and better relations with the West attracted fierce supporters and equally fierce critics during his life. While many of his opponents turned out to honour him, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stressed their close bond, what was intended by the state as a show of unity was clouded by the chants of thousands of opposition supporters, as well as the absence of reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami.
An eyewitness told Reuters on the phone from Tehran: “Some were chanting slogans asking for political prisoners to be released, some hardliners were shouting ‘Death to America!’. But they didn’t clash. Everyone was respectful.”
Some of the chants called for the release of former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and of Mehdi Karoubi, a cleric and former speaker of parliament who lost the disputed 2009 presidential election to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Both men refused to accept the results of that election and were placed under house arrest while Rafsanjani, who had backed them, was politically isolated along with his family.
Two separate sources said Hashemi’s daughter Faezeh, jailed for six months in 2012 on charges of anti-government propaganda, had told people at the funeral that Khatami had been banned from attending.
