Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha

Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha (born c. 1940) represents one of the most striking political transformations in the Islamic Republic: the spiritual patron and leader of the students who seized the US Embassy in November 1979 and held 52 American hostages for 444 days became, by the 1990s, the publisher of the reformist Salam newspaper and a leading voice of the Khatami reform movement. Khoeiniha served as the student hostage-takers' clerical patron, giving the takeover religious legitimacy. He subsequently became Prosecutor-General of Iran. By 1991, when he founded Salam, he was a leading member of the reformist Association of Combatant Clerics (Majma'-e Rowhaniyoon-e Mobarez), the clerical wing of the reformist left. When Salam was closed in July 1999 Khoeiniha was tried by the Special Court for the Clergy — the court that handles clerics outside the regular judicial system.