• Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several other officials were found dead on May 20, hours after their helicopter crashed in a foggy, mountainous region of the country’s northwest.

• The 63-year-old Raisi and his entourage were heading to the northwestern city of Tabriz after returning from a visit to a locality on the Azerbaijan-Iran border on May 19.

• The crash comes as the Middle East remains unsettled by the Israel-Hamas war, during which Iran launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel just last month.

• Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate power with a final say on foreign policy and Iran’s nuclear programme, said First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber would take over as interim President.

• Raisi was accused of being one of the four judges overseeing the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 after the Iran-Iraq war, a massacre Iran has never officially acknowledged.

Raisi was sanctioned by the US 

• Raisi previously ran Iran’s judiciary. He ran unsuccessfully for President in 2017 against Hassan Rouhani, who as President reached Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

• In 2021, Raisi ran again in an election that saw all of his potentially prominent opponents barred for running under Iran’s vetting system. He swept nearly 62 per cent of the 28.9 million votes, the lowest turnout by percentage in the country's history. 

• Iran ultimately is run by its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As President, Raisi supported the country's enrichment of uranium up to near-weapons-grade levels.

• Raisi, a conservative hard-line cleric known for his brutal crackdowns on political opposition and considered a potential successor to the supreme leader.

• Raisi supported attacking Israel in a massive assault in April that saw over 300 drones and missiles fired at the country in response to a suspected Israeli attack that killed Iranian generals at the country’s embassy compound in Damascus, Syria.

• He also supported the country’s security services as they cracked down on all dissent, including in the aftermath of the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini and the nationwide protests that followed.

• The months-long security crackdown killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained. In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the physical violence that led to Amini’s death after her arrest for not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.

• Raisi was defiant when asked at a news conference after his election about the 1988 executions, which saw sham retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that would become known as death commissions at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

• The UN Security Council was pressing for a ceasefire and, in July 1988, the National Liberation Army, a military force formed by the Iraq-based opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) staged an armed incursion into western Iran that was repulsed by the Iranian army.

• Between July and August 1988, thousands of political prisoners, men, women and teenagers, were reportedly executed.

• The 1988 massacre took place based on a ‘fatwa’ by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which specifically sought to annihilate the main opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI or MEK). Members of other groups were also targeted in a second wave. Victims were reportedly buried in mass graves across the country.

• Raisi was at the time Deputy Prosecutor of Tehran and a member of the 1988 “death commission” in the capital that sent thousands of prisoners to their death.

• Amnesty International described the massacres as crimes against humanity in a 2018 report.

• Neither Raisi nor any other official have ever been held accountable for their role in the 1988 massacre, which according to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) constitutes an ongoing crime.

• Raisi was sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.

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