Iran's dissident Grand Ayatollah Montazeri dies

Top Iranian dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a fierce critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was once tapped to become Iran's undisputed number one, has died, reports said yesterday.
"Montazeri, 87, died of an illness last night (Saturday)," the ISNA news agency said.
Montazeri, once designated as the successor to the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, came out in strong support of the Iranian opposition when it rejected the re-election of Ahmadinejad in June.
The cleric had long been critical of the concentration of power in the hands of the supreme leader and called for changes to the constitution, which he helped draw up after the Islamic revolution, to limit the leader's authority.