Iran’s first president Abolhassan Banisadr dies
Iran's first president after the 1979 Islamic revolution, Abolhassan Banisadr, died in a Paris hospital yesterday aged 88, the official news agency IRNA said. "After a long illness, Abolhassan Banisadr died on Saturday at the (Pitie-)Salpetriere hospital" in southeast Paris, IRNA reported, citing a source close to the former president. Banisadr was elected president in January 1980 hot on the heels of the previous year's Islamic revolution. But he was dismissed by the Iranian parliament in 1981 after he opposed late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Since then, he had been living in exile in France. From the start of his mandate, Banisadr faced immense difficulties: the US hostage affair, the Iran-Iraq war, an economic crisis and, above all, the opposition of fundamentalist clerics. As Iran's armed forces commander from February 1980 to June 1981, he reorganised the country's military and spent much of his time on the front lines of the war with Iraq.
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