Abolhassan Banisadr

Abolhassan Banisadr was born in Hamadan into a prominent clerical family and studied economics and sociology at the University of Tehran. An active anti-Shah dissident in the National Front, he fled to Paris in 1963 to complete his doctorate at the Sorbonne. In 1978, he became one of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's closest advisors during Khomeini's French exile in Neauphle-le-Château, returning to Tehran with him on the historic Air France flight in February 1979.

In January 1980, Banisadr won 76% of the vote in Iran's first-ever presidential election. As commander-in-chief during the onset of the Iran-Iraq War in September 1980, he attempted to modernize the armed forces while fiercely resisting the takeover of state institutions by fundamentalist Shiite clerics of the Islamic Republican Party. Denounced by Khomeini and impeached by parliament in June 1981, he went into hiding and escaped to Paris aboard a hijacked military Boeing 707, living in Versailles under French police protection while campaigning for democracy in Iran until his death.