Posted on 12/31/2010 5:56:27 AM PST by nuconvert
In a rare public challenge to the Iranian regime, the country’s highest-ranking cleric has warned that prisoners’ confessions are invalid, signalling a deepening gulf between the political establishment in Tehran and clerical establishment in the holy city of Qom.
“Confessions of prisoners have no validity and if a judge uses confessions for issuing verdicts that judge is no longer qualified,” Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani told students this week, according to domestic websites including Parlemannews, which is run by reformist parliamentarians.
His statement is not only a religious decree that his followers must obey but a warning from the country’s most senior cleric to politicians that Qom’s religious establishment should not be ignored.
The decree also challenges the position of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who accepts the confessions of prisoners about their own acts – not those of others – as evidence during trial proceedings.
-EXCERPT-
Ayatollah Khamenei has visited Qom four times in less than two months in a bid to bridge the differences between clerics and senior politicians.
However, Ayatollah Khorasani reportedly refused to meet him. Instead, last week he met families of political prisoners in what is seen as a sign of sympathy with the opposition Green Movement – a reversal of his usual position of distancing himself from politics.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Good to see this finally happening. I hope that Qom stays strong.
Makes one wonder just how many of the Leaders are Iranian? The gran ayatollah brought in many foreign ayatollahs into Iran with him and placed them in positions of power. Mr Jimmah Caater was the gran a$$hole that let it all happen.
This means absolutely Nothing.
Move to Qom.
We can talk in a year or two.
Unfortunately, they are mostly Iranian Ayatollahs, though All ayatollahs, mullahs, and their supporters, primarily, subscribe to Arabic ideology, traditions, customs, and so on... when deemed required they incorporate Iranian ones.
P.S. - personally, I don’t buy the stuff about being born in some place/country as a pre-requisite. An example, being born in a stable does not make one a horse.
"Confessions of prisoners have no validity and if a judge uses confessions for issuing verdicts that judge is no longer qualified," Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani told students this week... His statement is not only a religious decree that his followers must obey but a warning from the country's most senior cleric to politicians that Qom's religious establishment should not be ignored.That's it for him then. Thanks nuconvert.
I wish we could use that in America too. Nifong and twisted shady settlements/shakedowns comes to mind. The BP fiasco but praise of Saddam’s burning wells being coerced out of the AMerican people through mainstream media propaganda bombardment is also key.
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