Mehdi Karroubi
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Hojjat ol-Eslam Mehdi Karroubi (مهدی کروبی; born 1939? in Aligoudarz in Lorestan) is an Iranian politician and cleric, the resigned chairman and founding member of the Militant Clerics Society party. He was the Speaker of the Iranian parliament from 2000 to 2004, and from 1989 to 1992, and a presidential candidate in the 2005 presidential election.
Karroubi was also a candidate in the 2004 parliamentary elections in Tehran, but after he ranked thirty-first in the first round, where thirty representatives were chosen, he withdrew from the second round.
Karroubi is a critic of the Guardian Council but at the same time supports the Supreme Leader, and calls himself a follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He was an Advisor the the Supreme Leader and a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, by appointment of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, until he resigned from all his political posts on June 19, 2005 after the first round of the 2005 presidential election (see below).
Karroubi considers himself a pragmatic reformist and is an ethnic Lur.
Presidential campaign
Karroubi was among the candidates of the reformists for the presidential election of 2005, where he finished third in the vote count, closely following the frontrunners, ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad. As neither could possibly gather a majority of the vote, a run-off election will be held on June 24, 2005.
After the announcement of the election results, Karroubi alleged that a network of mosques, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Basij militia forces, have been illegally used to generate and mobilize support for Ahmadinezhad. He then explicitly alleged Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, among the conspirators. After that, Ayatollah Khamenei has written to Karroubi and mentioned that his allegations are "below his dignity" and "will result in a crisis" in Iran, which he will not allow. As a reply and in an open letter, Karroubi resigned from all his political posts, including an Advisor to the supreme leader and a member of Expediency Discernment Council, on both of which he has been installed by Khamenei [1] (http://news.gooya.com/president84/archives/031422.php). The day after, on June 20, a few reformist morning newspapers, Eghbal, Hayat-e No, Aftab-e Yazd, and Etemad were stopped from distribution by the general prosecutor of Tehran, Saeed Mortazavi, for publishing Karroubi's letter, and finally banning Eghbal from publication [2] (http://www.isna.ir/Main/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-544137). On June 20, it was claimed that Karroubi was imprisoned in his house because of his letter.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who ranked first in the first round, has also pointed to organized and unjust interventions by "guiding" the votes, and has supported Karroubi's complaint [3] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/story/2005/06/050619_mf_hashemi_statement.shtml).
External links
- Official presidential website (http://www.karroubi.ir)
- Karroubi's open letter to Khamenei (http://news.gooya.com/president84/archives/031422.php)