Khalil Tahmasebi

Khalil Tahmasebi (Persian: خلیل طهماسبی) (14 February 1924 – 21 January 1955) was a carpenter and member of the Iranian fundamentalist group Fadayan-e Islam ("Self-Sacrificers of Islam"), which has been described as "the first Shiite Islamist organization to employ terrorism as a primary method of political activism." On behalf of this group, Tahmasebi was waiting in the crowd on 7 March 1951 when Iranian Prime Minister Ali Razmara visited the Shah Mosque for a memorial service, and fired three shots, killing Razmara. He was arrested at the scene. He was described as a "religious fanatic" by The New York Times. In 1952, during the premiership of Mosaddegh, the Iranian Parliament quashed his pending death sentence, and he was declared a "Soldier of Islam." According to Time, Tahmasebi "promptly rushed to the Hazrat Abdolazim shrine, wept joyously and said: 'When I killed Razmara, I was sure that his people would kill me.'" Following the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Tahmasebi was re-arrested and tried for the assassination of Razmara; he was executed in 1955.