The person thought to be the first victim was Kazem Sami Kermani, an "Islamic nationalist and physician" who had opposed the Shah and served as Minister of Health in the brief post-revolutionary provisional government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan. He was later a member of the first Majles where he criticized the government for its continuation of the Iran–Iraq War after the Liberation of Khorramshahr. He was murdered on 23 November 1988 in his clinic in Tehran by an ax-wielding assailant.