TEHRAN, 18 November 2002 — Iran’s supreme leader has ordered the hard-line judiciary to back down over its sentencing to death of a reformist academic, officials announced yesterday, but students were also violently told that their increasingly daring protests must stop.
Following mounting demonstrations and disapproval even from prominent conservatives, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the judiciary to revise its blasphemy verdict against Hashem Aghajari.
“I thank the supreme guide for responding favorably to a request from a group of university professors, by asking the appeals court to examine the case with greater attention,” a relieved Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karubi announced to MPs.
Karubi said Khamenei had ruled the courts need to take greater precautions before handing out such harsh rulings, while the Jomhuri Eslami newspaper — considered close to Khamenei’s entourage — said the “death sentence on Hashem Aghajari will be canceled”.
Aghajari, a disabled veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and ally of reformist President Muhammad Khatami, was put on death row on Nov. 6 after his questioning of the Shiite religious scholar’s right to rule was deemed to be blasphemous. Aghajari’s lawyer, Saleh Nikhbakht, thanked Khamenei for stepping into the crisis, saying the “decision of the supreme guide will put an end to this affair”.
But just hours later, hard-liners gave a violent signal to students that the protests sparked by the verdict would also have to stop. A group of Basij militiamen attacked some 600 student activists gathered at a Tehran university campus, in a brief rampage which saw the hard-liners hurl chairs and smash up tables while one student was delivering an address defending freedom of speech.
There was no immediate sign of any injuries at north Tehran’s Allameh campus, and the attack ended after around 10 minutes. (The Independent)
