TEHRAN, April 28 — A man accused of murdering a cleric in western Iran was killed in a shootout with police today, the semi-official news agency ISNA reported.
Behrouz Hajilouyi, a “thug with a criminal record,” allegedly shot Mostafa Ghasemi twice using a Kalashnikov rifle in front of the seminary where the Shiite cleric worked in Hamedan province yesterday, ISNA said.
Hajilouyi confessed to the crime in a now-deleted post on his Instagram account, the Fars news agency reported.
Authorities are yet to put forward a motive for the killing.
“The murderer of the 46-year old cleric was trapped on (Hamedan) city’s outskirts and shot dead in a firefight,” the city’s police chief Bakhshali Karmani told ISNA.
Two police officers were injured by Hajilouyi in the 20-minute shootout, he added.
Hajilouyi’s Instagram account shows photos of him posing with pistols, shotguns and automatic rifles.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reacted to the killing by calling on the police to crack down on firearms trade online.
“Prevent the sales of weapons in the cyberspace. The murderer of the Hamedan cleric has published photos of himself with four different types of weapons on Instagram. Countering such issues is the police’s responsiblity,” he said in a tweet on his official account.
Murders of clerics have been rare in the Islamic republic in recent years.
But in November a Sunni imam was shot dead in the northeastern province of Golestan, according to state media. — AFP
