Lebanon’s Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of Shiite Islam’s highest religious authorities and an early mentor of the militant group Hezbollah, died in a Beirut hospital yesterday, his family said.
Fadlallah, who was 74, had a wide following beyond Lebanon’s Shiites, extending to Central Asia and the Gulf.
He had been too frail to deliver his regular Friday prayer sermon for several weeks. He was taken to hospital on Friday suffering from internal bleeding.
Fadlallah was a supporter of Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the spiritual leader and mentor of the Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah when it was formed after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, though he later distanced himself from its ties with Iran.
He survived several assassination attempts, including a 1985 car bomb that killed 80 people in southern Beirut. US news reports said the attack was carried out by a US-trained Lebanese intelligence unit after attacks on US targets in Lebanon.
He distanced himself from the abduction of Westerners by Islamic militant groups in Lebanon during the 1980s, saying he was against kidnappings, and repeatedly called for their release.
Hezbollah’s al-Manar television interrupted its programs to broadcast recitations from the Koran and showed a picture of the white-bearded, black-turbanned cleric.
A fierce critic of the US, which formally designated him a terrorist, Fadlallah used many of his Friday prayer sermons to denounce US policies in the Middle East, particularly its alliance with Israel.
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