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Iran Declares National Mourning Day Over Chairman of Expediency Council

Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
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Iran Declares National Mourning Day Over Chairman of Expediency Council

Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi

Iran declared on Tuesday a one-day national mourning over Chairman of the Expediency Council Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who headed Iran’s judiciary during fierce crackdowns on dissidents, journalists and activists and died on Monday at the age of 70, AFP reported.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei performed funeral prayers Wednesday in Tehran for Shahroudi.

Shahroudi was a student of Iran’s revolutionary founder Khomeini who went on to hold some of the most powerful positions in the Islamic republic.

At the time of his death, he was head of the Expediency Council and a member of the 12-man Guardian Council -- two key institutions in shaping legislation and vetting election candidates. He was also deputy head of the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to choose the successor to Khamenei.

He had not been seen in public for several months, and there were reports last year that he underwent a surgery for an unspecified type of cancer in Germany.

A German MP filed a complaint against Shahroudi during his stay, calling for him to be charged with crimes against humanity, but a judge found no grounds to hold him.

Shahroudi headed the judiciary between 1999 and 2009 – a period that saw hundreds of executions and a crackdown on activists, dissidents and the reformist media.

His tenure concluded with the mass protests over allegations of vote rigging in the 2009 presidential election, which led to thousands of arrests and allegations of severe abuse in prisons.

The prosecution in 2001 of reformist MPs – despite their parliamentary immunity – was heavily criticized by the government at that time.

Shahroudi was born in Najaf in Iraq on August 18, 1948, and he met Khomeini when the latter was exiled to Iraq in the 1960s.

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New UK Prime Minister Starmer Assembles Cabinet for the First Meeting: ‘Now We Get to Work’

Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chairs the first meeting of his cabinet in 10 Downing Street, following a landslide Labour win in Thursdays General Election, in London, Britain, July 6, 2024. (Pool via Reuters)
Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chairs the first meeting of his cabinet in 10 Downing Street, following a landslide Labour win in Thursdays General Election, in London, Britain, July 6, 2024. (Pool via Reuters)
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New UK Prime Minister Starmer Assembles Cabinet for the First Meeting: ‘Now We Get to Work’

Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chairs the first meeting of his cabinet in 10 Downing Street, following a landslide Labour win in Thursdays General Election, in London, Britain, July 6, 2024. (Pool via Reuters)
Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chairs the first meeting of his cabinet in 10 Downing Street, following a landslide Labour win in Thursdays General Election, in London, Britain, July 6, 2024. (Pool via Reuters)

Prime Minister Keir Starmer held his first Cabinet meeting Saturday as his new government takes on the massive challenge of fixing a heap of domestic woes and winning over a public weary from years of austerity, political chaos and a battered economy.

Starmer welcomed the new ministers around the table at 10 Downing St., saying it had been the honor of his life to be asked by King Charles III to form a government in a ceremony that officially elevated him to prime minister.

“We have a huge amount of work to do, so now we get on with our work,” he said.

Starmer’s Labour Party delivered the biggest blow to the Conservatives in their two-century history Friday in a landslide victory on a platform of change.

Among a raft of problems they face are boosting a sluggish economy, fixing a broken health care system, and restoring trust in government.

“Just because Labour won a big landslide doesn’t mean all the problems that the Conservative government has faced has gone away,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

In his first remarks as prime minister Friday after the meeting “kissing of hands” ceremony with Charles at Buckingham Palace, Starmer said he would get to work immediately, though he cautioned it would take some time to show results.,

“Changing a country is not like flicking a switch,” he said as enthusiastic supporters cheered him outside his new official residence at 10 Downing. “This will take a while. But have no doubt that the work of change begins — immediately.”

Starmer singled out several of the big items, such as fixing the revered but hobbled National Health Service and securing its borders, a reference a larger global problem across Europe and the US of absorbing an influx of migrants fleeing war, poverty as well as drought, heat waves and floods attributed to climate change.

Conservatives struggled to contain the flow of migrants arriving across the English Channel, failing to live up to ex-Prime Minister’s Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats.”

Starmer has said he will scrap the Conservatives controversial plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda. The plan had cost hundreds of millions of pounds (dollars) without a single flight taking off.

“Labour is going to need to find a solution to the small boats coming across the channel,” Bale said. “It’s going to ditch the Rwanda scheme, but it’s going to have to come up with other solutions to deal with that particular problem.”

Suella Braverman, a Conservative hard liner on immigration who is a possible contender to replace Sunak as party leader, criticized Starmer's plan to end the Rwanda pact.

“Years of hard work, acts of Parliament, millions of pounds been spent on a scheme which had it been delivered properly would have worked,” she said Saturday. “There are big problems on the horizon which will be I’m afraid caused by Keir Starmer.”