Iranian of the Day

[This is a picture of the ambulance carrying him to his funeral. Sad, but perfectly befitting! I have checked the photo series on Mehr News and it's authentic.]

Tehran (DPA) - Iran's controversial former interior minister, Ali Kordan, died on Sunday, the labour news agency ILNA reported. Kordan, who was dismissed in November last year by the parliament for having presented a faked university certificate, died at the age of 51 in a Tehran hospital following a brain disease, ILNA said. Kordan came under pressure after his appointment as interior minister in August last year after the Oxford University in Britain denied having ever awarded him an honorary doctorate through its representative in Tehran, as he had claimed. The parliament eventually dismissed him with the argument that an interior minister with a faked academic certificate would damage the reputation of the Islamic system. Kordan at that time blamed parliament deputies for disgracing him and giving a pretext to the Western media for creating what he called "psychological warfare" against the Islamic state. The controversial case led to disputes between the conservative- dominated parliament and hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had refused to sack the minister and called university certificates "pieces of torn paper."