‘Hanging Judge’ Replaced in Iran Parliamentary Post
An Iranian official, who gloated over the charred bodies of Americans killed in an attempted hostage rescue in 1980 and who was known as Iran’s “hanging judge,” was replaced Sunday as head of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
The official news agency IRNA, reporting an annual election for the post, said that Sadegh Khalkhali was replaced by Said Rajai-Khorasani, a deputy from Tehran and former chief of the Islamic Republic’s mission at the United Nations.
Khalkhali horrified Americans at the height of the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis in 1980 by his macabre gloating at a news conference over the burned bodies of service personnel killed in a helicopter crash during an unsuccessful bid to rescue the captives.
He was Iran’s most ruthless Islamic judge in the early years after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution, sending hundreds of supporters of the ousted shah, members of the leftist opposition and drug dealers to their death.
The report, monitored in Cyprus, did not say whether Khalkhali, who held the foreign affairs chairmanship for the past year, ran for reelection.
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