President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev visited the Iranian embassy on 21 May, and expressed condolences to the Iranian people over the tragic death of President Ebrahim Raisi and his companions in a helicopter crash in the north of the country.
The head of state “left an entry with words of sincere sympathy and support in the Book of Condolences opened at the diplomatic mission”, the report stated.
During a brief conversation with Ambassador Muhammad Ali Iskandari, the head of Uzbekistan emphasized that “President Ebrahim Raisi was an outstanding statesperson and politician who made a great contribution to sustainable socio-economic development, improving the welfare of the population and strengthening the international prestige of Iran, as well as expanding mutually beneficial multifaceted cooperation between our countries”.
Recently, Shavkat Mirziyoyev sent a message of condolences to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
- Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter crashed in a mountainous region in northwestern Iran on 19 May. Raisi was returning from the opening ceremony of a dam on the Araks river on the border with Azerbaijan, which was also attended by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Footage from the scene shows the helicopter crashing into a mountain peak. No official information about the cause of the crash has been released yet.
- Ebrahim Raisi was born in 1960 in the family of a clergyperson in the city of Mashhad. In the 1980s he worked as a deputy prosecutor and later as a prosecutor in Tehran. In 1988, he was part of a special commission that executed thousands of political prisoners in the Iranian capital.
- In 2017, he ran for the presidency of Iran but lost to then-President Hassan Rouhani. Raisi won the next presidential election in 2021. Raisi was considered a protégé of Ayatollah Khamenei.
