[custom_adv] Mehdi Hashemi (1946 – 28 September 1987) was a Shi'a cleric who was defrocked by the Special Clerical Court. After the 1979 Revolution, he became a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards; he was executed by the Islamic Republic in its first decade. [custom_adv] Officially he was guilty of sedition, murder, and related charges, but others suspect his true crime was opposition to the regime's secret dealings with the United States (see Iran–Contra affair). [custom_adv] He first became known to the Iranian public during the closing days of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1977, when SAVAK arrested him for the vigilante murder of "prostitutes, homosexuals, and drug traffickers". [custom_adv] He was also accused of murdering a conservative cleric who had publicly insulted cleric khomeini, the Grand Ayatollah. Hashemi was also the brother of Hadi Hashemi, Ayatollah Montazeri's son-in-law. During this time he was supported by opponents of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as an innocent victim framed by SAVAK, in an attempt "to tarnish the reputation of the clerical establishment." [custom_adv] After Hashemi's followers kidnapped a Syrian official in Tehran in October 1986, and shortly before the public exposure of the Irangate scandal, the Iranian government announced Hashemi had been arrested for treasonalong with 40 associates including his brother Hadi Hashemi. He was stripped of his Hujjat al-islam title. [custom_adv] His prosecution was handled by the Mohammad Reyshahri, the former judge of the military tribunals who had recently been appointed minister of intelligence. According to Reysharhri's Political Memoirs, Hashemi had powerful patrons, and after a month-long investigation, all the interrogators "had obtained was a taped interview in which the wise guy had cleverly planted deviant ideas." [custom_adv] However many more months of "thorough" interrogation of Hashemi including the application of 75 lashes for lying, and confrontation with "damaging confessions" from his 40 accomplices including his brother, produced more. [custom_adv] After eight months and three different taped interviews Hashemi produced a taped confession aired on national television and headlined in newspapers as "I am Manifest Proof of Deviation." [custom_adv] Hashemi was executed in Tehran in September 1987 before his verdict was announced. This was reportedly done to preclude the intervention on Hashemi's behalf by Montazeri, according to prosecutor Reyshahri. The execution was a blow to Ayatollah Montazeri, who had pleaded with Ayatollah Khomeini on Hashemi's behalf saying he had "known him inside out since our childhood.
