Imam Khomeini Art Festival in Tehran

Imam Khomeini Art Festival was held in Tehran today. This blogger is not joking. I would have thought that Imam Khomeini and art festival did not belong in the same sentence, as in oxymoron. But the government did hold the festival today, called “The Image of Imam Khomeini.” (Press TV, 2 June)

Some 36 posters and 45 photos, displaying personality and life of Imam Khomeini, were exhibited at the event. I wonder what the founder of the Islamic Republic would have thought of an art festival in his honor! I guess if you live long enough, you could see stranger things!

The photo is a picture of Ayatollah Khomeini in Neauphle-le-Chateau, a Parisian suburb, praying under the now-famous apple tree (or The Apple Tree as is called in Iran)

Agca, Gunman Who Shot Pope John Paul II, Claims Khomeini Ordered the Attack

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II, now claims that Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini personally told him to kill the pope. In his new autobiography, "They Promised Me Paradise" – which was released in Italy today, Agca claims that he was trained in Iran by Iranian intelligence after escaping from a Turkish prison, and that the Iranian leader himself told him to kill John Paul in the name of God. (AP, 31 January)

Agca shot and wounded John Paul on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter's Square. Minutes after being arrested, Agca claimed he had acted alone. Later he changed his story and suggested that the Soviet and Bulgarian intelligence were behind the attack, but later backed away from that assertion. The Pope pardoned Agca and he was released from prison in 2010.

File photo: Mehmet Ali Agca (The Telegraph)