EFL
TEHRAN, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) — An Iranian ayatollah died suddenly of a heart attack during an impassioned speech lashing out at insults against the family of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the run-up to elections, the press reported on Sunday.
Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Tavassoli, a former head of Khomeini's office, died while delivering the speech to Iran's main arbitration body, the Expediency Council, of which he was a member, the Kargozaran daily reported.
He had been responding to unprecedented ultra-conservative attacks against Hassan Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini's respected grandson, who had criticised mass disqualifications in the March election and military interference.
"He was attacking those people with fossilized minds who attack the family and the ideas of the Imam Khomeini when he had a cardiac arrest," Mohammad Hashemi, brother of council head Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, told the paper.
He also quoted a letter from Khomeini from the early days of the revolution denouncing "reactionaries who attack the family and friends of the Imam Khomeini under the pretext of defending him."
"Defending the Imam until the very last moment," lauded the headline of Kargozaran next to a picture of Tavassoli, 77.
May many more follow in his footsteps.