Ayatollah who was an active Islamist. Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, a small rotund man with a pointed beard, was a founder member of the Militant Clergy of Tehran who were committed to Islamification. As the president of the Revolutionary Courts he was responsible for the trials of many of the Shah's leading lieutenants following the 1979 Iranian revolution. He was abhorred in the West and was dubbed as 'hanging judge', and for his role in the American embassy hostages in Tehran in 1980. Ayatollah Khalkhali was active as an Islamist resistance fighter from 1950s until the ousting, in 1979, of the Shah. In 1980 he was appointed to head an anti-narcotic campaign. Immediately after Ayatollah Khomeini's death in 1989, he was the first person to propose Hojatoleslam Ali Khamenei as the spiritual leader of Iran in order to keep the legacy of the deceased. Ayatollah Khalkhali was an MP for the holy city of Qom for more than a decade and served as head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy committee. In 1992 he retired to Qom to teach in religious schools and write his memoirs. Muhammad Sadeq was a farmer's son born in Givi near Khalkhal and was part of that group of bright young men who attended religious schools. He died after a long and painful struggle with arthritis, heart disease and cancer.