A top Iranian Shia Muslim cleric and member of the influential Assembly of Experts was slain in a gun attack in northern Iran. After being shot in a bank in Babolsar, Mazandaran province, Ayatollah Abbasali Soleimani died in hospital.
Its governor stated that the attacker, who was apprehended, was a bank security guard and that the motivation was unknown.
Ayatollah Abbasali Soleimani was one of 88 clerics who served on the Assembly of Experts, which chose the Supreme Leader.
The elected body also oversees his performance and has the authority to dismiss him if he is considered incapable of carrying out his responsibilities.
He also previously served as the current Supreme Leader’s personal agent in the volatile south-eastern region of Sistan-Baluchistan, standing down in 2019 after 17 years in the job.
BBC Parham Ghobadi, a Persian, claims to have been a hardliner who advocated for gender segregation in all public locations in the Islamic Republic, including workplaces.
Ayatollah Soleimani, who was in his mid-70s, was shot while visiting a Bank Belli branch in Babolsar on personal business at 10:30 (07:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
CCTV footage obtained by the Tasnim news agency appears to show the cleric seated on a chair inside the bank, clothed in a customary dark robe and white hat.
A middle-aged man wearing a blue and white uniform and carrying what looks like a submachine gun is then seen walking up to him from behind before firing a series of shots into his back.
The man is then disarmed and detained by two other men, one of whom is wearing a green uniform.
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The governor of Mazandaran, Mahmoud Hosseinipour Nouri, said the attacker was a local man who was one of several armed guards employed by a security contractor to protect the bank.
“So far, the motive of the assailant for the act is rather unclear,” he told state TV.
He said the police’s investigation into the shooting was continuing, but that “our information and documents indicate that this was not a security or terrorist act”.
According to an original report by Hawzahnews, the official website of Iran’s Shia seminaries, the attacker was a guy who snatched a bank guard’s gun and began fire, rather than a guard.
Two clerics were killed and a third was injured in a knife attack at a Shia shrine in Mashhad, Iran, last April. In June, an ethnic Uzbek man was hung after being found guilty of carrying out the stabbings, the cause for which police did not explain.
