A helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran crash-landed in northwestern Iran, on Sunday afternoon.
Following the incident, Iranian state media reported that extensive search operations were underway but were being impeded by poor weather conditions.
The 63-year-old, a figure representing conservative and hardline factions in Iranian politics, was president for nearly three years, and appeared on track to run for re-election next year.
A former chief justice, Raisi was touted as a potential successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 85-year-old supreme leader of Iran.
Raisi was born in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, a religious hub for Shia Muslims. He underwent religious education and was trained at the seminary in Qom, studying under prominent scholars, including Khamenei.
Also like the supreme leader, he wore a black turban, which signified that he was a sayyid – a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, a status with particular significance among Twelver Shia Muslims.
Raisi racked up experience as a prosecutor in multiple jurisdictions before coming to Tehran in 1985. It was in the capital city that, according to human rights organisations, he was part of a committee of judges who oversaw executions of political prisoners.
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In his early 20s, he was appointed prosecutor in successive cities until he went to the capital Tehran to work as a deputy prosecutor.
In 1983, he married Jamileh Alamolhoda, the daughter of Mashhad’s Friday Prayer Imam Ahmad Alamolhoda. They went on to have two daughters.
For five months in 1988, he was part of a committee overseeing a series of executions of political prisoners, a past that has made him unpopular among the Iranian opposition and led to the United States imposing sanctions on him. In 1989, he was appointed prosecutor of Tehran after the death of Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Raisi continued to rise through the ranks under Khomeini’s replacement, Ayatollah Khamenei, becoming chairman of the Astan Quds Razavi, the biggest religious endowment in Mashhad, on March 7, 2016, which cemented his status in Iran’s establishment.
