Iranian Professor Will Not Appeal Death Sentence

TEHRAN, Iran -- A university professor has decided not to appeal a reinstated death sentence, effectively challenging Iran's hard-line judges to execute him for criticizing clerical rule, his lawyer said Tuesday.

The original sentence handed down to Hashem Aghajari in 2002 provoked massive student demonstrations and street battles with hard-line vigilantes. The uproar highlighted the power struggle between reformists and conservatives in Iran.

The Supreme Court overturned the death penalty last year. But the original court in the western province of Hamedan province has reinstated it, a provincial judicial official disclosed Monday.

"Professor Aghajari told me Monday evening that his family and I have no right to appeal the new death sentence," Saleh Nikbakht told reporters Tuesday.

Iranian Professor Will Not Appeal Sentence....

***

Other coverage

• Death sentence for Iranian academic (Al Jazeera)
  

Yesterday

• Iran dissident faces death again
  
• Khatami blames clerics for failure
  
• Reform Movement Ensured Respect for Freedom: Khatami

A real hero. I know I would never have that much courage in the same circumstances.

It looks like they won't execute him for fear of a massive student upheaval. There is a change coming in Iran brought about by her own people-as it always should be. By the way he also lost a leg in the war with Iraq.

Wish we could have put a little more support for Max Cleland he lost three limbs in Vietnam only to be smeared by Bush's lackeys.

just praying (for yet one more reason) that Kerry'll win this election, as I don't trust this administration not to get in the middle of it and fuck that up, too.

Wouldn't it be ironic if it ended up that *Iran* was our key ally in the ME?

Geez,...I hope someone comes to his aid. :cry:

Is every death sentence so sad? I think so, if you follow it. Aghajari's case is really easy to sympathize with, at least for me.

And, yes,...death sentences are sad, in my view,...because we are putting ourselves in a position of determining the worth of both life and death.

I couldn't even guess.

Because,...well,...just because such a move would incite his "base" of support.

Doncha' think? :bounce:

Judiciary spokesman rejects confirmation of Aghajari's death sentence:

Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Elham on Tuesday rejected confirmation of a death sentence passed by a local court in Hamedan on academic Hashem Aghajari and said the preliminary verdict is not effective. He told reporters that three experienced judges at the Supreme Court have been assigned to study the charge against Aqajari.

Last year, a local judge in Hamedan sentenced to death Aqajari, a war veteran and academic, for criticizing the religious tenet of emulation. After the death sentence was issued in a matter of week in Hamedan, a group of academics sent a letter to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei asking for clemency. Khamenei ordered the Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi to save the innocent life.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the 2nd Khordad (reformist) groups in the parliament Ali Akbar Mohtashami criticized the death sentence passed on Aqajari as illegal and unusual. He told reporters that the verdict neither conforms to Sharia nor the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. "It is a political action rather than a judicial one," Mohtashami said.