Islamic Republic was devised and formalized, the SCC were not conceived as part of it. However, in 1987, the courts were revived by a decree of Ayatollah Khomeini in order to try an outspoken critic of the Iran–Contra affair, Mehdi Hashemi. Faced with disapproval of the unconstitutionality of the SCC, Khomeini sent a letter to the Majles of Iran in 1988, recommending that the special courts start operating within constitutional perimeters after the end of the Iran–Iraq War. In 1990-91, a year after Khomeini's death, the "Special Clerical Court" was established by the new Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, (the "third phase"). On November 7, 1990, Mohammad Salimi was appointed the head of the Second Branch of the Special Court for the Clerics. Khamenei "significantly expanded the SCC. While the courts had hitherto functioned on the basis of no specific code, Khamenei commissioned an extraordinary ordinance of 47 articles, which was expanded in 2005. To the one court in Tehran, he added ten other branches throughout the country (Tehran, Qom, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Sari, Ahvaz, Kerman and Hamedan). "A separate prison network" was commissioned for the SCC. However, not included in all these new changes was the legalization or integration of the court into the official Iranian justice system per Khomeini's letter. The court remained under the direct jurisdiction of the Supreme Leader. Size and leadership The cases and procedures before the SCC "are generally secret and confidential", so there is no official information about how many people the court has put on trial, what charges have been brought or sentences passed. However, according to one estimate (by Wilfried Buchta), in the year 2000 there were about 3000 prisoners in the SCC system, 6000 people in its employment. Over a twelve year period from 1988 to 2000, about 600 people were sentenced to death and executed, 2000 clergy were defrocked and another 4000 punished with prison sentences, fines or beatings While this may seem to involve an unusually large number of offenders and punishments, the SCC chief justice Hojjat al-Islam Mohammad Salimi stated in 2006 (to the effect) that about 2000 complaints are registered with the SCC per year. Heads of the Clerical Court since its inception (as of 2018) are: Ali Fallahian, Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri, Ali Raazini, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni eje’i, Mohammad Salimi Mohammad Jaffar Montazeri ( in office as of 2018). The current prosecutor and chairman of the Clerical