Mammoth crowd of people on Tuesday morning at Tabriz, the capital city of East Azerbaijan province began farewell funeral procession for Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi and other top government officials who died in helicopter crash around mountainous area of Azerbaijan on Sunday afternoon.

Ebrahim Raisi  nd every other persons onboard the Helicopter were confirmed dead on Monday after several hours of search and rescue efforts by 40 different groups spanning from Sunday afternoon till Monday early morning night.

Immensely large crowds of people mostly Iranians receive the coffin of Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi and others who died alongside with him with different batches of military personnel carrying each coffin on their shoulders with a very long procession walk in Tabriz.

It would be recalled that rescue teams searched the mountainous area from Sunday afternoon after a helicopter carrying Raisi, the foreign minister and other officials had gone missing.

Early Monday, relief workers located the missing helicopter, with Iran state TV saying the president had died.

Ebrahim Raisi, and Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, were among the high-profile passengers in the helicopter crashed that occurred in mountainous terrain and in a very poor visibility.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced on Monday five days of mourning for President Ebrahim Raisi who died in a helicopter crash.

“The servant of Iranian nation, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi has achieved the highest level of martyrdom whilst serving the people,” state television said Monday, with Mehr news agency also saying he was dead.

Ebrahim Raisi was Iran’s president from 2021 until his death yesterday and had a reputation as a conservative hardliner.

Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s hardline president who was elected in 2021, was declared dead early on Monday, alongside other senior politicians, following a fatal helicopter crash in Iran’s East Azerbaijan region.

Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, was expected to assume the presidency after Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash as the country gears up for early elections next month 28.

Raisi served as the eighth president of Iran, and was often described as a protege and potential successor of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Tabriz city in Iran has been inundated with millions of Iranians gathered for the funeral of President Ebrahim Raisi.

The Helicopter crash that killed the president alongside other state officials was believed to have been caused by poor weather conditions, and the aviation team reported that the helicopter was completely burnt in the incident.

Prior to his tenure as president, it was gathered that the ultra-conservative Raisi started his career as a prosecutor in various areas of Iran, including the Iranian capital, Tehran, and went on to establish connections with Iran’s religious and judicial elite.

In 1988, when Raisi was 27 years old, history had it that he was part of a four-person committee overseeing the extra-judicial execution of political prisoners. 

Amnesty International, had said: “thousands of political dissidents were systematically subjected to enforced disappearance in Iranian detention facilities across the country and extrajudicially executed pursuant to an order issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran”.

It was observed and estimated that between 4,000 to 5,000 prisoners were killed. Most of them were said to be from the People’s Mujahideen armed opposition group, or from left-wing parties.

On his political life, in 2017, he made his first attempt to run for the presidency, having served as one of the Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces’ presidential candidates.

Raisi lost to incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, who was re-elected and seen as more of a “moderate” in the country’s political bloc. Raisi received 39 percent of the vote.

But in 2021, the presidential elections saw him collecting 62 percent of the vote in an an event marred by a record-low voter turn-out, the highest share of protest votes and a crackdown on journalists reporting on any of the candidates, according to international media and observers.

“The elections infamously reported the number of invalid votes to be higher than those of non-winning candidates, prompting rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), to declare the elections as a “sham”  and “neither free no fair”. Many also suspected that Raisi’s victory was rigged, while reformist candidates were barred from the elections”, one of the International media stated in its report.

Mike Pence, former USA Vice President said through his X social media handle that “Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is dead and the world is a safer place.

Raisi was responsible for the murder of thousands of Iranian political prisoners he ordered, executed in 1988. 1,500 Iranians slaughtered in the 2019 protests and the years of terrorist violence sown by Iran across the region that claimed American lives.

My hope and prayer is that Raisi’s death will give the people of Iran a chance to claim their birthright of freedom and end Iran’s long reign of terror”, Mike Pence words ends in quote.

It could be recalled that in September, 2022, CNN top broadcast journalist, Christiane Amanpour, recounted how the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, cancelled an interview with her over her refusal to wear a headscarf.

In a Twitter now X social media thread, Amanpour revealed the interview had been behind schedule without Raisi showing up when an aide of his came to demand that she covers her hair.

She tweeted and stated in quote thus: “40 minutes after the interview had been due to start, an aide came over. The president, he said, was suggesting I wear a headscarf, because it’s the holy months of Muharram and Safar.

“I politely declined. We are in New York, where there is no law or tradition regarding headscarves. I pointed out that no previous Iranian president has required this when I have interviewed them outside Iran.

“The aide made it clear that the interview would not happen if I did not wear a headscarf. He said it was “a matter of respect,” and referred to “the situation in Iran” – alluding to the protests sweeping the country.”

She added, “Again, I said that I couldn’t agree to this unprecedented and unexpected condition. And so we walked away. The interview didn’t happen.”

During the period, protests were rocking Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest by ‘morality police’ for improper use of the hijab.