TEHRAN, Feb 19
(AFP) - Former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, 51, has officially announced his candidacy for the presidential election on June 8,
his office announced Monday in a statement carried by the official IRNA agency.
Fallahian is a religious conservative of medium rank and was head of the
secret services and member of the government under the former head of state
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from 1989 to 1997.
He was born in Najafabad, near Ispahan in the centre of the country, and
studied at the Haghani Koranic school of the holy city of Qom, 125 kilometres (75 miles) south of Tehran, which is considered a bastion for
the training of the conservative clergy.
After the 1979 Islamic revolution he served in the first revolutionary committees (urban militia), then was deputy to the state prosecutor.
He is also a member of the Assembly of Experts, the directly-elected body
responsible for deciding on the country's supreme leader, a position currently held by Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
Khamenei's predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny, who died in 1989, named
him during the 1980's as head of a control body of the armed forces, then
prosecutor of the special court set up to try members of the Shiite clergy.
Jailed campaigning journalist Akbar Ganji used a recent court hearing to
accuse Fallahian and the "Haghani circle" of involvement in the 1998
murders of dissident intellectuals.
Fallahian denied Ganji's allegations but was summoned to court in January
as an "informed person" in the trial of 18 secret agents for the murders. |
