IRANIAN President Ebrahim Raisi has been found dead at the site of a horror helicopter crash.
The brutish president, 63, was among several discovered on Monday following a gruelling overnight search in blizzard conditions.
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Tyrannical Raisi, dubbed “The Butcher”, was yesterday travelling in a convoy of three helicopters in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province when his own suffered a “hard landing”.
Eerie footage showed Raisi sitting in a helicopter and staring out a window moments before the crash.
The president’s body was located after an hourslong search through the fog in the mountainous region of the country’s northwest, state media and officials reported on Monday.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was also found dead in the charred wreckage of the helicopter, said by state news agency IRNA to have been a US-made Bell 212 helicopter.
No immediate cause for the crash was provided by officials, but state TV reported the helicopter had slammed into a mountain peak.
The Iranian Red Crescent said today that the bodies of Raisi and others who died in the crash had been recovered and that search operations had ended.
Red Crescent chief Pirhossein Koolivand told state TV: “We are in the process of transferring the bodies of the martyrs to Tabriz,” adding that “the search operations have come to an end.”
Earlier, a senior Iranian official told Reuters: “President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash.”
Vice President Mohsen Mansouri, who is set to become Iran’s interim president, confirmed Raisi’s death on social media.
Video shared online today showed what appeared to be riot police in Tehran – who some say may be needed to subdue locals’ celebrations of President Raisi’s death.
Turkish authorities this morning released “drone footage” showing what appeared to be a fire in the wilderness, which they suspected to be wreckage of Raisi’s helicopter.
The coordinates listed in the footage indicated the fire was some 12 miles south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border, on the side of a steep green mountain in northwest Iran.
Footage released by the IRNA also showed what the agency described as the crash site.
Soldiers speaking in the local Azeri language said: “There it is, we found it.”
Shortly after, state TV in an on-screen scrolling text said: “There is no sign of life from people on board.”
Iran’s government has said it will operate “without disruption” after Raisi’s death.
The crashed copter was said to have last been heard from in Jolfa, a city on the border with Azerbaijan – 375 miles northwest of Iranian capital Tehran.
Raisi was elected president in 2021 amid controversy, with almost all of his potential opponents banned from running under Iran’s shame vetting system.
The brute received 62 per cent of votes as the country’s only viable candidate – although only 28.9 million votes were cast, which was the lowest turnout by percentage in the history of the state.
Since taking office, Raisi has ordered a tightening of morality laws, overseen a crackdown on anti-government protests, and pushed hard in nuclear talks with world powers.
Butcher by name, butcher by nature
Activists opposed Raisi’s rule, citing concerns over the tyrant’s bloody history steeped in murder and executions.
The president has been accused of ordering the torture of pregnant women and of having prisoners thrown off cliffs.
He is also said to have headed up a “Death Commission” which ordered thousands to be killed in the massacre of 1988.
Some 30,000 men, women and children held in jails across Iran were lined up against a wall and brutally gunned down on Raisi’s orders, according to his rivals.
His regime also enjoyed the stonings and beheadings he ordered.
Iran has never acknowledged the mass executions and Raisi never addressed the allegations about his role in them.
There are still a high number of executions carried out in Iran every year, and Amnesty International has said Raisi should face an investigation for “crimes against humanity”.
Amnesty chief Agnès Callamard said previously: “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.”
Iran’s executions & torture
IRAN carries out around 250 executions a year – the most of any country in the world aside from China.
Under its Islamic Penal Code, a death sentence can be handed down for crimes such as kidnapping, adultery, drinking alcohol and political crimes as well as murder.
Victims can also have their fingers amputated for counts of petty theft – leaving just the thumb and palm – using a guillotine-like tool.
Children as young as 12 can also be sentenced to death, which is against international law.
And torture is believed to rife in Iran’s prisons, with electric shocks, floggings, water boarding and sexual violence used on prisoners, according to human rights groups.
Stoning to death for adultery also remains on the statute books, though the latest figures show none have been carried out recently.
Electric shocks in prisons see victims strapped into a chair and forced to confess to crimes with the power being turned up if they don’t.
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