Tehran: In a shooting attack, two senior judges of the Iranian Supreme Court were killed at the tribunal building in central Tehran. An armed person who opened fire at the judges killed himself after his act, Al Jazeera reported, citing the media centre of the judiciary.
The attack, which happened on the first day of a week in the Iranian calendar, also injured a bodyguard.
The two judges were identified as Hojjat al-Islam Razini and Hojjat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen Moqisseh, who helmed different branches of the court. The statement by the media centre said that the deceased duo were involved in dealing with crimes against national security, espionage and terrorism. The statement described them as courageous and experienced.
It was Iranian Judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir who confirmed to the Iranian state television that a person armed with a handgun shot the two judges.
It is learned that the armed person entered the room where the two judges were and opened fire at them, while the identity of the assailant or his motive was not immediately clear.
A preliminary investigation into the assailant's profile suggested that he had no prior cases in the Supreme Court nor was one of its visitors.
According to Iranian media, an investigation is on to identify and arrest more people, if any, who were involved in the attack.
Seventy-one-year-old Razini, one of the deceased judges, faced an attempted assassination in 1998. He was the head of Tehran judiciary then. Moqisseh, the sixty-eight-year-old other judge, was sanctioned by the United States for having “overseen countless unfair trails, during which charges went unsubstantiated, and evidence was disregarded,” according to the US Department of the Treasury.