Shariat-Madari; Accused in Attempt on Khomeini

Mohammed Kazem Shariat-Madari, once the second-most-popular ayatollah in Iran behind Ruhollah Khomeini but who fell out with Khomeini over the extremes of the post-shah government, died Thursday of liver cancer in a Tehran hospital, Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The official agency said Shariat-Madari, 87, recently was moved from the holy city of Qom to Tehran. Members of his family were with him when he died, the agency said.

Shariat-Madari, leader of the 14 million Turkish-speaking Iranians in East Azerbaijan province, was an ayatollah, the highest title for Shiite Muslim clergymen. But he was stripped of his title in 1982 after being accused of complicity in what the Iranian government described as a coup attempt against Khomeini’s fundamentalist Islamic regime.

Former Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was charged with leading the coup attempt, which the Iranian government said involved a plan to bomb Khomeini’s house in Tehran. Ghotbzadeh was executed by firing squad in September, 1982.

Shariat-Madari was sentenced to eight months in prison and house arrest for 10 years.

Shariat-Madari was one of the leaders of the Islamic revolution against the monarchy. His house in Qom became a gathering place for young theologians opposed to the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who fled Iran in 1979 and died in Egypt in 1980.

After Khomeini’s return from self-exile in 1979, Shariat-Madari split with him--largely over the high number of executions the Khomeini regime carried out against political opponents and Khomeini’s radical intrusions into secular areas.