Iran to Review Academic’s Case

Students who have staged a series of large rallies for free speech and government reform claimed a victory Sunday as Iran’s supreme leader ordered a review of a death sentence handed down against a dissident academic.

The weeklong student rallies and strikes in support of history professor Hashem Aghajari had raised political tension at a crucial stage in the power battle between Iran’s reformists and hard-liners. Aghajari was sentenced to death for questioning the powers of the hard-line clergy and for allegedly committing blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad.

The reformists, allied with President Mohammad Khatami, enjoy popular support and dominate parliament but have run into stiff resistance from conservatives, who oppose changing Iran’s Islamic system and control the judiciary and other key state bodies.

The hard-line Jomhuri Islami newspaper reported Sunday that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s most powerful figure, had ordered the judiciary to review Aghajari’s case.

“Based on the request of hundreds of university professors, the leader ordered the judiciary to carefully review this case,” the newspaper quoted an informed source as saying. The newspaper, seen as being close to Khamenei, said the death sentence would likely be overturned.

Students greeted the news as a victory and said they would consider ending their protests.

“There’s no need for the students to protest now. They presented and reached their goal, which was the cancellation of the verdict,” said a student leader who declined to be identified. “It’s a big victory for students in defense of freedom of expression.”

Even some prominent conservatives had criticized the Aghajari verdict, and analysts said Khamenei’s intervention revealed how concerned the leadership was about the uproar.

The judiciary -- which has been a major thorn in the side of Khatami’s reform efforts, closing liberal newspapers and jailing pro-reform intellectuals and journalists -- emerges weaker from the case, analysts said.

“The judiciary will have to be more careful in future.... This was a setback for them,” said Hamid Reza Jalaipour, political science lecturer at Tehran University.

Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi thanked Khamenei for intervening. “I would particularly like to thank the leader for taking into account the importance of blood and human life in Islam,” he was quoted as saying by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.