Iran’s Assembly of Experts convened its 16th session without its speaker Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi-Kani, who suffered a heart attack in early June and fell into a coma. The meeting of the assembly, which is constitutionally tasked with supervising and choosing the supreme leader, was led by deputy speaker Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastgheib, the assembly representative from Fars province, refused to attend the session in protest, although he said he would attend future sessions if he found it necessary.

When his students asked via his website why he refused to attend, the prominent Reformist cleric responded, “I have written notes from the highest officials to the lowest officials … regarding the incident in Shiraz. I have also written the president some letters and other letters to the elders. Unfortunately, there has been no answer from the judiciary, … which shows that it is not independent, and at the same time there has been no answer from the president, because they will say he defended the sedition.”

The “incident in Shiraz” is a reference to the attack on his mosque in September 2010 by Basiji and others in plain clothes. Ayatollah Dastgheib supported opposition protests that rejected former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election claiming fraud. In his response, he also wrote that he had asked officials to investigate the election violations of 2005 and 2009 but had not yet heard anything.