2 yıl önce

Iran protesters torch home of late leader Khomeini

Social media videos showed flames at the house, which was turned into a museum commemorating the 1979 Iranian Revolution's leader Ruhollah Khomeini, with crowds of jubilant protesters marching past.

AFP

Images of Khomeini have on occasion been torched or defaced by protesters, in taboo-breaking acts against a figure whose death is still marked each June with a holiday for mourning.

Protesters in Iran have set on fire the ancestral home of Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, two months into the protests, images showed.

The house in the city of Khomein in the western Markazi province was shown ablaze late Thursday with crowds of jubilant protesters marching past, according to images posted on social media, verified by AFP news agency.

Khomeini is said to have been born at the house in the town of Khomein – from where his surname derives – at the turn of the century.

He became a cleric deeply critical of the US-backed shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, moved into exile but then returned in triumph from France in 1979 to lead the revolution.

Khomeini's house was later turned into a museum commemorating him. It was not immediately clear what damage it sustained.

Nationwide protests erupted in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody on September 16, following her arrest for an alleged breach of Iran's dress code for women.

Remarkable: Protestors in Iran torched the ancestral home (now a museum) of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the 1979 revolution, in the town of Khomein. pic.twitter.com/ikWMVVfzfM
— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) November 18, 2022

Protestors in the city of Khomein have burned down the childhood home of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the country's current theocracy. The symbolic significance of this move against the most revered figure in the Islamic Republic cannot be overstated.#MahsaAmini pic.twitter.com/vmoJfj3NAX
— Siavash Ardalan (@BBCArdalan) November 18, 2022