PARIS: Protesters in Iran set fire to the ancestral home of the Islamic republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini two months after the anti-regime protest movement, images showed on Friday.
The house in the city of Khomein in the western province of Markazi caught fire late on Thursday with jubilant crowds of protesters marching past, according to images posted on social media, verified by AFP .
Khomeini is said to have been born at the house in the town of Khomein – where his surname originates – at the beginning of the last century.
He became a cleric deeply critical of the US-backed monarch Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who lived in exile but then returned triumphantly from France in 1979 to lead the Islamic revolution.
Khomeini died in 1989 but remains the subject of praise from the clerical leadership under his successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The house was later turned into the Khomeini memorial museum. It is not clear how it was damaged.
Protests broke out after the death of Mahsa Aminiwho was arrested by the ethics police, posing the biggest street challenge to Iran’s leaders since the 1979 revolution.
They were fueled by anger over the mandatory headscarf for women imposed by Khomeini but turned into a movement calling for an end to the Islamic republic itself.
Khomeini’s image was sometimes burned or smeared by protesters, in taboo violations of a figure whose death is still marked each June with a day of mourning.
The house in the city of Khomein in the western province of Markazi caught fire late on Thursday with jubilant crowds of protesters marching past, according to images posted on social media, verified by AFP .
Khomeini is said to have been born at the house in the town of Khomein – where his surname originates – at the beginning of the last century.
He became a cleric deeply critical of the US-backed monarch Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who lived in exile but then returned triumphantly from France in 1979 to lead the Islamic revolution.
Khomeini died in 1989 but remains the subject of praise from the clerical leadership under his successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The house was later turned into the Khomeini memorial museum. It is not clear how it was damaged.
Protests broke out after the death of Mahsa Aminiwho was arrested by the ethics police, posing the biggest street challenge to Iran’s leaders since the 1979 revolution.
They were fueled by anger over the mandatory headscarf for women imposed by Khomeini but turned into a movement calling for an end to the Islamic republic itself.
Khomeini’s image was sometimes burned or smeared by protesters, in taboo violations of a figure whose death is still marked each June with a day of mourning.
