Khoeiniha was born in
Qazvin,
Imperial State of Iran, in 1945. However, Mohammad Sahimi gives his birth year as 1938. He moved to
Qom to study religion in 1961. He was the spiritual leader of the
Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line who led the
hostage taking of American embassy staff on 4 November 1979. He was asked by Ayatollah Khomeini to "supervise" the students during the incident, thus giving them legitimacy. He is reported to have held the post of deputy speaker of the Majles in the early 1980s. He was appointed by Khomeini
prosecutor general of Iran, replacing
Ayatollah Yousef Sanei in the post in the mid-1980s. Khoeniha remains a staunch defender of the embassy takeover, and still keeps "a four-drawer metal filing cabinet with a plate saying 'Property of the General Services Administration,`" in his office, a souvenir taken from the embassy. Khoeiniha and other "left-wing ... veteran revolutionary mullahs" from the Assembly of Militant Clerics founded
Salam in 1991, after the Assembly members were not only banned by the conservative
Guardian Council from running for the
Assembly of Experts but could find no newspaper even willing to print that news and their protest. Despite its limited circulation and focus on influencing policy, the paper became very popular and helped elect reformist
Muhammad Khatami president in 1997.
Salam was banned on 7 July 1999 for releasing "an alleged secret memo by a former intelligence agent, urging authorities to tighten restrictions on the press". This "triggering
student demonstrations of a magnitude not seen since the 1979 revolution." "because of his sterling revolutionary credentials". Less than two weeks later the Clergy court "imposed a five-year ban on
Salam and banned Musavi-Khoeiniha from practicing journalism for three years". The court ruled that the journalist was "guilty of disseminating untruthful and distorted news aimed at harming public opinion." Until 2006, Khoeiniha was not active. He became the leader of
the Association of Combatant Clerics when
Mehdi Karroubi left the party to establish another one. ==See also==