TEHRAN, April 12: Veteran Iranian opposition leader Yadollah Sahabi, who fought against US and British domination and later against religious extremism, died on Friday aged 96.

Sahabi, a university professor with liberal Islamic views, died at a Tehran hospital where he was admitted two weeks ago after a cerebral haemorrhage. He slipped into a coma a week ago and had already been announced brain-dead, they said.

Sahabi was a close ally of Mohammad Mossadeq, the former prime minister who nationalised British oil interests, advocated a policy of non-alignment and undermined the pro-American shah only to be brought down by a CIA coup in 1953.

In 1962, Sahabi was jailed and exiled before the shah banned his liberal Islamist group, the Freedom Movement of Iran, and forced him and his allies to go underground.

He joined the 1979 revolution which overthrew the shah and served briefly in the first post-revolutionary administration led by another nationalist, Mehdi Bazargan, and was elected in the first parliament.

But both Sahabi and Bazargan were sidelined from power by the powerful ayatollahs and forced into opposition in the early 1980s.

A French-educated ecologist who promoted science in Iran, Sahabi campaigned for human rights and was a strong critic of the Islamic republic’s radical, anti-Western policies.

The Islamic government, in turn, accused him and other liberal dissidents of acting as stooges for Western powers.

Sahabi remained politically active until recent years. In 1999, he sent an open letter to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging him to distance himself from conservatives who have opposed the reforms of President Khatami.—Reuters