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Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri has died in his sleep, aged 87, in the holy city of Qom, Iran. His death has already sparked unrest in Tehran University, and the Iranian authorities are preparing for more protests during his funeral Monday 21 December.

Montazeri moved from being the designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution against the Shah, to a fierce critic of the regime’s abuses of human rights. He critized the execution of up to 30,000 muhajedin opponents in the aftermath of the country’s war with Iraq in the 1980s. He was also opposed to Khomeini’s fatwa against the British author, Salman Rushdie.

Montazeri was placed under house arrest for five and a half years in 1997 for his open opposition to Ali Khameini, elected Supreme Leader after the death of Khomeini.

Although frequently called a reformist, Montazeri was an early and committed member of the opposition that toppled  the Shah in 1979. It was his unsurpassed standing as a Shia cleric that gave him the moral authority to question Iran’s political leadership, including the outcome of Iran’s recent presidential election in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Links to other sites: BBC, The Telegraph, Times Obituaries