Sadeq Khalkhali: The death of Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, aged 77, marks another step on the road towards reform and the recognition of human rights in Iran. Khalkhali, known as the hanging judge, was at the forefront of the reign of terror that followed the Iranian revolution in 1979 and was a founder member of the Militant Clergy of Tehran who were committed to Islamification at all costs.
As president of the Revolutionary Courts, his trials of many of the Shah's leading lieutenants were initially heard in classrooms. They sometimes lasted as little as one minute; executions on the school rooftops usually followed immediately.
He was a farmer's son, born near Khalkhal (hence his name), and was part of that group of bright young men who attended religious schools, which have always provided an alternative route to education. He was active as an Islamist resistance fighter from the 1950s until the ousting of the Shah.
The killings began five days after Ayatollah Khomeini's return in February 1979 from Paris. By November 550 people had been executed.
In May 1980 Khalkhali was moved sideways and appointed to head an anti-narcotics campaign. The move did not diminish his power to kill at will. Within weeks there were 127 executions; by the end of August this had risen to 200, including members of Marxist organisations and prisoners on hunger-strike.
In December President Bani-Sadr forced the "bloody judge" to resign for failure to account for over $14 million seized by the agency through drug raids confiscation and fines.
By sacking him, Bani-Sadr incurred Khalkhali's wrath which, in June 1981, led to a successful move to impeach the president. A beaming Khalkhali announced the decision to a cheering crowd and symbolically grasped his own throat as the sign for the hangman. In the event Bani-Sadr managed to leave the country dressed as a woman.
The departure of Bani-Sadr marked the beginning of the bloodiest phase of the post-revolutionary struggle for power. There was a massive purge of the administration and the media. The resistance movements staged counterattacks and bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party. The regime retaliated by open attacks and mass executions.
Gallows were hitched up in main Tehran streets, and sometimes as many as eight people were hanged at the same time. In the mayhem that ensued, the age of treason was lowered and children as young as nine were "executed". Within a couple of months more than 8,000 people had been killed.
Eventually the thirst for blood was satiated. In December 1982 Ayatollah Khomeini issued an eight-point decree announcing that the state had a duty of care to its citizens and demanding that the indiscriminate killing be curbed. Gradually the killings abated, but Khalkhali's legacy was the conviction that it was possible, indeed laudable, for "Islamic courts" to execute individuals at will.
In 1984 Khalkhali returned to the parliament as the representative for Qom. But it was in 1989 that he helped to make yet another indelible mark on the destiny of the Islamic Republic - as a kingmaker.
After Khomeini's death in 1989, Khalkhali was the first to propose Hojatoleslam Ali Khamenei as spiritual leader of the nation.
President Khatami's 1997 landslide election was a firm rejection of everything Khalkhali had stood for. Khalkhali made a symbolic nod towards reformism, but his influence continues through the theocrat Khamenei, who remains true to the ideals of Khomeini.
Ayatollah Khalkhali leaves a wife and a son.
Mohammed Sadeq Givi Khalkhali: born July 27th, 1926; died November 27th, 2003