Two Supreme Court judges assassinated in Tehran, the murderer committed suicide

Two judges of the Iranian Supreme Court were assassinated on Saturday in Tehran by an armed man, announced the official agency of the Judicial Authority, Mizan Online. The heads of Branch 39 and 53 of the Supreme Court, Justices Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghisseh, were killed in the Supreme Court compound in the south of the Iranian capital, and the assailant committed suicide, Mizan Online said.

The agency did not provide details on the motivations of the perpetrator but clarified that he “did not have a case before the Supreme Court”. The case, very rare in Iran, “is now the subject of an investigation,” added Mizan, describing the crime as a “terrorist” act.

Rare precedents

In 2005, the judge of the revolutionary court of Tehran, Massoud (Hassan) Moghadas, was assassinated in the middle of the street in Tehran. In April 2023, an ayatollah member of the Assembly of Experts, the college responsible for appointing, supervising and eventually removing the supreme leader, was shot and killed in northern Iran. The two judges killed Saturday were Hodjatoleslam, a mid-ranking Shiite cleric, who had presided over hearings in major trials in recent years.

Mohammad Moghisseh, 68, has had a long career in the judiciary since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. He was sanctioned in 2019 by the United States for having “supervised a countless number of unfair trials”. For his part, Ali Razini, 71, has held important positions within Iran’s judicial and political systems. He had already been the target of an assassination attempt in 1998, when he was head of the judiciary in the capital Tehran.