Hardliner Ebrahim Raisi has won Iran’s presidential election in a race that was widely seen as being designed to favour him.
He thanked Iranians for their support, after securing 62% of the votes.
Mr Raisi is Iran’s top judge and holds ultra-conservative views. He is under US sanctions and has been linked to past executions of political prisoners.
Iran’s president is the second-highest ranking official in the country, after the supreme leader.
Mr Raisi will be inaugurated in early August, and will have significant influence over domestic policy and foreign affairs. But in Iran’s political system it is the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the top religious cleric, who has the final say on all state matters.
Iran is run according to conservative Shia Islamic values, and there have been curbs on political freedoms since its Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Many Iranians saw this latest election as having been engineered for Mr Raisi to win, and shunned the poll. Official figures showed voter turnout was the lowest ever for a presidential election, at 48.8%, compared to more than 70% for the previous vote in 2017.
Hardliner Ebrahim Raisi has won Iran’s presidential election in a race that was widely seen as being designed to favour him.
He thanked Iranians for their support, after securing 62% of the votes.
Mr Raisi is Iran’s top judge and holds ultra-conservative views. He is under US sanctions and has been linked to past executions of political prisoners.
Iran’s president is the second-highest ranking official in the country, after the supreme leader.
Mr Raisi will be inaugurated in early August, and will have significant influence over domestic policy and foreign affairs. But in Iran’s political system it is the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the top religious cleric, who has the final say on all state matters.
Iran is run according to conservative Shia Islamic values, and there have been curbs on political freedoms since its Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Many Iranians saw this latest election as having been engineered for Mr Raisi to win, and shunned the poll. Official figures showed voter turnout was the lowest ever for a presidential election, at 48.8%, compared to more than 70% for the previous vote in 2017.
But many Iranians and rights groups have pointed to Mr Raisi’s alleged role in the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988, when he was 27 years old.
He is said to have been part of a so-called “death committee” – one of four judges who oversaw secret death sentences for about 5,000 prisoners in jails near Tehran, according to Amnesty International. It says the location of the mass graves where the men and women were buried is being “systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities”.
“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran,” said Amnesty chief Agnès Callamard.
Mr Raisi has repeatedly denied his role in the death sentences. But he has also said they were justified because of a fatwa, or religious ruling, by former supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
Amnesty also says that as head of the judiciary Mr Raisi oversaw impunity for officials and security forces accused of killing protesters during unrest in 2019.
-BBC
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