Blasphemer gets death pardon
2004-06-01 11:27
Tehran - Iran's Supreme Court has quashed a death sentence for blasphemy against dissident intellectual Hashem Aghajari, a spokesperson for the Islamic republic's hardline judiciary told the student news agency ISNA on Tuesday.
"I can confirm the information given on Monday by certain media stating that the Supreme Court has quashed the death sentence handed to Hashem Aghajari," said the spokesperson, Gholamhossein Elham.
Aghajari, a history professor at Tehran University and a disabled war veteran, was convicted of blasphemy by a judge in the western city of Hamedan in November 2002 for calling for a reformation in Iran's state Shiite Muslim religion.
He had said in a speech there that Muslims were not "monkeys" and "should not blindly follow" religious leaders, an assertion the court took as a direct challenge to the Shiite Muslim concept of emulation and the status of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The verdict sparked major student protests in Iran, and prompting the intervention of Khamenei.