TEHRAN – Dramatist Nasrollah Qaderi plans to write a play about the life story of Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Beheshti, Iran’s Judicial Council chief who was assassinated in a terrorist operation on June 28, 1981.

Entitled “Another Ashura”, the play has been commissioned by the Art Bureau, an affiliate with the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization (IIDO).

“In this play, the story goes along with the event of Ashura and it begins with the death of Mohammadreza Kolahi Samadi, an Iranian dissident accused of planting a bomb at the Islamic Republic party’s headquarters and killing Ayatollah Beheshti and over 70 other people,” Qaderi said.

Kolahi was a member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and was suspected of planting a bomb at the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) that killed more than 70 officials in 1981.

He added that the story is narrated by the wife of Kolahi, and the mother and wife of Ayatollah Beheshti.

“All the events are selected from the documents and books about Ayatollah Beheshti as well as the documents about his assassination,” he added.

Ayatollah Beheshti played a key role in establishing Iran as an Islamic republic in 1979. 

On February 3, 1979, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, appointed Beheshti a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Council, and he soon became the council’s first secretary. 

He also became the leader of the newly founded Islamic Republican Party (IRP), which was the most important group in the Majlis – parliament. 

Considered one of the most powerful men in Iran, Beheshti played a leading part in the U.S. hostage crisis.

Kolahi was sentenced to death in absentia after fleeing the country in 1981. He was gunned down in front of his home in the Dutch town of Almere in December 2015.

Photo: Martyr Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Beheshti in an undated photo.

RM/MMS/YAW