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Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was buried in Iran’s holy city of Mashhad on Thursday (23/5/2024) as thousands of mourners packed the streets for his funeral, four days after he died in a helicopter crash.
According to footage broadcast by Iranian media, the funeral ceremony was attended by Iranian government and military officials, as well as religious figures.
Flowers were thrown on his coffin as it moved slowly onto a truck through crowds of mourners to be buried at the gold-domed Imam Reza shrine, Iran’s holiest Islamic site and revered as the resting place of the 9th-century Imam Ali al-Reza. Raisi is from Mashhad, 900 km (560 miles) east of Tehran.
Earlier, thousands of people paid their respects as his coffin was carried in a motorcade through the eastern city of Birjand.
As is known, eight passengers and crew died when the helicopter crashed in a mountainous area near the Azerbaijan border on Sunday (19/2024). They include Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian.
Iran declared five days of mourning for Raisi, who imposed the hardline policies of his mentor, Khamenei, aimed at strengthening the power of Shiite clerics, cracking down on public dissent and taking a tough stance on foreign policy issues such as talks with Washington to revive the nuclear pact Iran in 2015.
Raisi, 63, is widely seen as a candidate to replace 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who holds supreme power in Iran. Mohammad Mokhber, who was first vice president, is serving as interim president until elections in June. The presidential election has been scheduled for June 28.
Meanwhile, a ceremony was held to commemorate Amirabdollahian at the foreign ministry in Tehran, where acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani described him as a martyr who had guaranteed the revolutionary nature of the foreign ministry.
Amirabdollahian was buried south of Tehran at the Shah Abdolazim shrine in the city of Rey, a mausoleum where famous Iranian politicians and artists are buried.
