Mostafa Pour Mohammadi Elected as Secretary General of the Society of Clergy

The spokesperson for the Society of Clergy announced that Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, former Minister of Interior in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government and Minister of Justice in Hassan Rouhani's first term, has been elected as the Secretary General of this group for the next year and a half. Mohammad Ali Mohammadi Kermani, the former Secretary General of the Society of Clergy, has been elected as the Chairman of the Central Council of this group. According to ISNA news agency, Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam announced that on Tuesday, 8th of Khordad, a meeting of the Central Council of the Society of Clergy was held and Mostafa Pour Mohammadi was elected as the Secretary General of this group until the General Assembly is formed. The General Assembly of the Society of Combatant Clergy will be held in late 1398 (around a year and a half from now). Some members of the Society of Clergy have stated that in the new structure of this group, the Secretary General will have executive duties. Mostafa Pour Mohammadi was a member of the decision-making committee regarding the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988. He served for years as Deputy Minister of Intelligence and previously from 1979 to 1986 as the Revolutionary Prosecutor in the provinces of Khuzestan, Hormozgan, and Khorasan. Mr. Pour Mohammadi was the Minister of Interior in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first government and after being dismissed from this position, he was appointed as the head of the General Inspection Organization. He was chosen as Minister of Justice in Hassan Rouhani's first government, and at the same time, 11 human rights organizations had requested Rouhani not to introduce him as Minister of Justice in his second term due to his role in the execution of political prisoners in 1988. The new statute of the Society of Combatant Clergy was approved in Ordibehesht, and according to this statute, the President, Vice President, and Secretary of the Central Council are elected by the members of this council for a period of two years. Meanwhile, Mohammad Ali Mohammadi Kermani, the former Secretary General of the Society of Clergy, was previously elected as the Chairman of the Central Council of this group. In the meeting on Tuesday, Mohsen Mojtahed Shabestari, the former Friday Imam of Tabriz, was elected as Vice President of the Central Council, and Reza Taqvi, the former head of the Policy-Making Council of Friday Imams, was elected as the Secretary of this council. Before Mr. Mohammadi Kermani, Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani served as Secretary General of the Society of Combatant Clergy from 1981 until his death in 2014. The Society of Combatant Clergy was formed by clergy supportive of Ayatollah Khomeini and has been active since 1977. Prominent figures of this group included Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti, Morteza Motahhari, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Javad Bahonar, Mehdi Karroubi, and Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri. On the eve of the third parliamentary elections in 1987, a group of clergy known as the left, including Mehdi Karroubi, separated from the Society of Combatant Clergy and established the Assembly of Combatant Clergy. In 2016, the Society of Combatant Clergy removed the term 'Combatant' from its name. Hassan Rouhani and Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri are also members of the Society of Clergy but have not participated in the meetings of this group in recent years.