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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Africa Europe Latin America Middle East North America Iran dissident Grand Ayatollah Montazeri dies AFP - Monday, December 21 Send IM Story Print Leading Iranian dissident the Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri (pictured) has died, local news agencies have reported. TEHRAN (AFP) - – Top Iranian dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a fierce critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was once tapped to become Iran's undisputed number one, is dead, his office said Sunday. Montazeri, 87, died of an illness Saturday night, said his office in the holy city of Qom, where he had been based for years. An official told AFP that a funeral will be held on Monday and that the cleric would be buried in the shrine in Qom to Masoumeh, a revered Shiite figure. The grand ayatollah became an inspiration to rights advocates and pro-reform groups and was considered by his followers as the highest living authority of Shiite Islam in Iran. According to the opposition website Rahesabz.net, students in the Tehran University immediately began mourning once they heard news of the death of the grand ayatollah, a source of inspiration for many Iranians. But semi-official news agency Fars and the official IRNA news agency in reporting his death dropped his title, while state television said he had @died of illness and senility." Montazeri, once designated as the successor to the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, came out in bold support of the Iranian opposition -- which comprises many students -- when it rejected the re-election of Ahmadinejad in June. The cleric had long been critical of the concentration of power in the hands of the supreme leader and called for changes to the constitution which he helped draw up after the Islamic revolution, to limit the leader's authority. Montazeri had often criticised hardliner Ahmadinejad over his domestic and foreign policies, including Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West. He had also called on other leading clerics to break their silence over incidents and rights abuses during the government's crackdown on opposition supporters protesting the June presidential election, which they claimed was massively rigged in Ahmadinejad's favour. Controversially, he had called for direct talks between Tehran and Washington to avert conflict over Iran's controversial programme of uranium enrichment. The grand ayatollah described the 1979 seizure of US embassy in Tehran a "mistake" even though he said he had approved of the move at the time. Montazeri, one of the main architects of the Islamic republic, was a student and close ally of Khomeini, whom he was set to succeed. But the cleric fell from grace in the late 1980s after he became too openly critical of political and cultural restrictions, most notably Iran's treatment of political prisoners and opposition groups. Montazeri resigned months before Khomeini's death in 1989, and was told by Khomeini to stay out of politics and focus instead on teaching in the city of Qom. Unfazed by such warnings, he continued to speak out. The grand ayatollah also questioned the theological credentials of current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This was branded as treason, and in 1997 Montazeri was placed under house arrest. Freed after five years on health grounds during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, the grand ayatollah vowed that he would continue to speak out in defence of freedom and justice. In his latest reaction to the post-vote crackdown on protests, Montazeri strongly slammed "the killing of innocent people, the arrest of political activists and freedom-seekers as well as their illegal show trials." Montazeri regularly met pro-reform activists and rights campaigners who sought his opinion on political and religious issues. Although the dissident's comments rarely appeared in the Iranian press, his views and interviews were published on his official website as well as by the foreign and Persian-language media based outside Iran. Reporting his death, pro-government news agencies IRNA and Fars dropped the clerical title of Grand Ayatollah and their headlines read "Hossein Ali Montazeri passed away." "He acted as the clerical figure of rioters in the post-election incidents and his unfounded statements were widely welcomed by anti-revolutionary media," the official IRNA news agency said of Montazeri. "Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri died of illness and senility... in the Qom city," state television website reported. 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