TEHRAN, Oct 9, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - Iran's first president after the 1979 
Islamic revolution, Abolhassan Banisadr, died in a Paris hospital on Saturday 
aged 88, the official news agency IRNA said.

  "After a long illness, Abolhassan Banisadr died on Saturday at the (Pitie-
)Salpetriere hospital" in southeast Paris, IRNA reported, citing a source 
close to the former president.

  Banisadr was elected president in January 1980 hot on the heels of the 
previous year's Islamic revolution.

  But he was dismissed by the Iranian parliament in 1981 after he opposed 
late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Since then, he had been 
living in exile in France.

  Born on March 22, 1933 in a village near Hamadan in western Iran, Banisadr 
was a supporter of liberal Islam.

  A practising Muslim, he was an activist from the age of 17 in the ranks of 
the National Front of Iran, the movement of nationalist leader Mohammad 
Mossadegh.

  After studying theology, economics and sociology, Banisadr became a leading 
opponent of the Shah's regime.

  Wanted by the police, he was forced to leave Iran in 1963 and settled in 
Paris. In 1970, he advocated the union of the Iranian opposition around 
Khomeini, who was exiled in Iraq.

  In October 1978, Khomeini went to France, and Banisadr became one of his 
close friends and advisers.

  On February 1, 1979, Banisadr was on the plane that brought Khomeini back 
to Iran.

   He served as Iran's minister of economics and foreign affairs.

  The man at times referred to as "Khomeini's spiritual son" was elected 
president of the Islamic Republic of Iran on January 26, 1980.

  From the start of his mandate, Banisadr faced immense difficulties: the US 
hostage affair, the Iran-Iraq war, an economic crisis and, above all, the 
opposition of fundamentalist clerics.

  As Iran's armed forces commander from February 1980 to June 1981, he 
reorganised the country's military and spent much of his time on the front 
lines of the war with Iraq.

  But the proponent of an "Islamic third way" that respected democratic rule, 
he faced intense pressure from hardliners.

  After over a year of disputes with some senior members of the Shiite 
clergy, the democratisation process came to a halt.

  On June 21, 1981, Banisadr was dismissed by parliament for "political 
incompetence" with Khomeini's approval.

  Banisadr then left Iran on July 29, 1981 hidden on board a military 
aircraft hijacked by one of his supporters. As soon as he arrived in France, 
he requested and obtained political asylum.

  In August 1981, he founded the National Council of Resistance of Iran 
(NCRI) with another exiled leader, Massoud Rajavi, leader of the People's 
Mujahedin, who had escaped on the hijacked plane, but he left the 
organisation less than three years later.

  He had been living in Versailles since May 1984.