General Hassan Pakravan, director of SAVAK from 1961 to 1966,[12] had an almost benevolent reputation, for example dining on a weekly basis with Ayatollah Khomeini while Khomeini was under house arrest, and later intervened to prevent Khomeini’s execution on the grounds that it would “anger the common people of Iran”.[13] After the Iranian Revolution, however, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah’s officials to be executed by the Khomeini regime.