TEHRAN, 4 July 2004 — The retrial of Iranian dissident Hashem Aghajari opened in Tehran yesterday, with the judiciary allowing a public hearing and all charges that could lead to the death penalty dropped.
After nearly two years locked away from public view, the Tehran University history professor appeared weak and complained of being held for months in solitary confinement with the shadow of execution hanging over him.
But Judge Mohammad Eslami confirmed during the hearing that the disabled war veteran no longer faced death for having called for a reformation in Iran’s state Shiite Muslim religion.
Instead of upholding original charges equivalent to apostasy and blasphemy, Aghajari was yesterday accused of insulting religious sanctities, propagating against the regime and spreading false information.
His charge sheet, read out by prosecutor general Reza Jafari, numbered 21 pages and also covered six years of Aghajari’s writing prior to his arrest.
If convicted on all the counts — to which he has pleaded not guilty — he could face a total sentence of between five and 10 years in jail. The prosecutor requested a heavy sentence due to Aghajari’s “continued crimes”.
Aghajari had been sentenced to death in his first trial, behind closed doors, in the western city of Hamedan in November 2002. After the verdict sparked widespread student protests, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei intervened and ordered a retrial.
The same court defiantly upheld its original ruling, forcing the Supreme Court to refer the case to a more sympathetic court in the capital. Aghajari’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, confirmed last week that the dissident was no longer facing the hangman’s rope.
But Aghajari, looking tired and with his hair grown longer, nevertheless used the hearing to complain about his treatment in detention. “How can you put a history professor in solitary for more than 10 months,” he asked the small group in the courtroom.
Speaking briefly to reporters when the hearing was adjourned until Monday, Aghajari refused to say if he was optimistic now that the 25-year-old regime had softened the charges.
“We have to see what the result is,” he said. His wife, Zahra Behnoudi, who was able to attend the hearing, said: “I hope that with the suppression of the apostasy charges, the judge will release him. But the charges upheld against him are still very heavy.”
Aghajari, who lost a leg in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, sparked the wrath of Iran’s powerful hard-liners when he said in a speech to students in Hamedan that Muslims were not “monkeys” and “should not blindly follow” religious leaders.
The speech was taken by the court as an attack on the very core of Iran’s 25-year-old Islamic regime — the position of the supreme leader who cannot be questioned and the Shiite concept of emulation.
Aghajari had also been sentenced to eight years in jail. The term was later commuted to four years before being scrapped on April 14, but he is still being held in Tehran’s Evin prison.
