TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Hundreds of Iranians attended the funeral Thursday of Ebrahim Yazdi, one of the country’s most influential dissident politicians and a former foreign minister.
The ceremony took place in a mosque north of Tehran and was attended by many of Yazdi’s political allies as well as ordinary Iranian citizens. His coffin was draped with the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran and friends acted as pallbearers.
Yazdi died at age 85 on Sunday in Izmir, Turkey, where he was being treated for complications from cancer after being denied a U.S. visa for follow-up treatment in Houston, Texas, in January. He had worked as a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas until the mid-1970s.
Yazdi was a close ally of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. However, his party, the Freedom Movement, later turned against the clerics as they consolidated power. Yazdi was frequently sentenced to prison on security charges, including an eight-year term in 2012.
A former member of parliament, Yazdi resigned as foreign minister in 1979 in protest of the takeover of the U.S. embassy by militant students who kept 52 Americans hostages for 444 days. Washington later cut diplomatic relations with Tehran.