Rais accident was caused by a technical failure, says Iran

The helicopter crash in which Iranian President Ebrahim Reis lost his life was due to a “technical punishment”.

So writes Iranian state agency “Irna”.

The Iranian branch of the Red Halfhail humanitarian network said on Monday that its search and rescue teams had arrived at the crash site and “found no sign that helicopter passengers were alive”.

The discovery of the burned ruins of Reiss helicopter among the trees followed hours of research.

Foreign Minister Hosseyin Amir-Abdollahian was also on board and is supposed to be dead, along with presidential guard head Mehdi Mousavi, eastern Azerbaijanan Governor Malek Rahmati, the representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader in eastern Azerbaijan, Mohammad Ali Ale-Heshem, and the crew.

Reiss, 63, was a conservative clergyman and former justice chief, who was responsible for decades of vicious blows against his people's aspirations for freedom.

Educated in the town of Qom and named “casap”, he was allegedly involved in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in the late 1980s, according to the Iranian opposition.

As justice chief, he was also responsible for the wave of arrests and executions that followed mass protests against the regime in 2019-2020.