Author: Press Trust of India/Agence-France
Press
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: November 7, 2002
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=16602
Outspoken Iranian pro-reform writer
and intellectual Hashem Aghajari has been sentenced to death on charges
of insulting Islam, his lawyer told AFP on Thursday.
Saleh Nikbakht said the dissident
activist, a reformist radical and supporter of reformist President Mohammad
Khatami, was condemned to die by a court in the western city of Hamedan
on Wednesday.
Aghajari is a member of the secular
Leftist Organization of Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution (OMIR), a leading
party in Iran's reformist government.
He was arrested in August after
saying in a speech that Muslims "should not blindly" follow religious leaders
and calling for a "religious renewal" of Shiite Islam.
He was later accused by the conservative-run
judiciary of "insulting the Prophet", for which the maximum penalty is
death. Reformist sources said the writer can appeal against the sentence,
which also included eight years in jail, 74 lashes and a 10-year ban on
teaching.
A leading conservative cleric had
compared Aghajari to British writer Salman Rushdie, who was condemned to
death in February 1989 by an Iranian religious decree for publishing The
Satanic Verses, a book which authorities in Iran deemed blasphemous.
