Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani Passes Away At 82
MEP: Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran and chairman of the Expediency Council died on Sunday in Tehran at the age of 82.
Mr Rafsanjani, ruled the nation from 1989 to 1997, suffered a heart attack.
The official IRNA news agency reported earlier in the day that Rafsanjani had been taken to Shohadaa Hospital north of the capital, Tehran. The semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Mohammad Hashemi, his brother, as saying that Rafsanjani was in good condition.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani attended the hospital where Ayatollah Rafsanjani was hospitalized, undergoing treatment.
In a tweet, the president said: “The soul of the great man of the Revolution, symbol of patience and resistance, has gone to Heaven.”
Head of Tehran’s Shohada Hospital has declared heart arrest as the cause of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani’s passing away.
Born in the village of Bahraman, near Rafsanjan, into a wealthy family of pistachio farmers, Rafsanjani attended a traditional Qur’anic school and in 1948 went to a seminary in the holy city of Qom, where he lived near Khomeini. By 1956, he had completed his basic theological studies. In 1963, the Shah ordered seminarians, technically exempt, to serve in the army. Rafsanjani fled and was arrested.
