Abolhassan Banisadr, Iran’s first president after the 1979 Islamic Revolution who fled the country after being impeached for challenging the growing power of a group of clerics died Saturday at the age of 88.
After the Islamic Revolution, true power remained firmly wielded by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whom Banisadr worked with in exile in France and followed back to Tehran amid the revolution.
Khomeini rejected Banisadr after only 16 months in office. “I was like a child watching my father slowly turn into an alcoholic,” Banisadr later said of Khomeini. “The drug this time was power.”
In the spring of 1980, government forces under the command of President Banisadr brutally attacked most of the Kurdish cities through a huge military campaign. Many villages and towns were destroyed because of the fighting between Kurdish fighters known as Peshmerga and government forces.
The family of Banisadr in a statement Saturday said he died at a hospital in Paris after a long illness.
