Iran MPs slam repression of November student protests

Iranmania ^ | March 10 2003 | AFP

[knighthawk]

TEHRAN, March 9 (AFP) - More than 120 Iranian MPs sent an open letter to President Mohammed Khatami denouncing measures taken against student leaders during protests in November over the sentencing of a dissident intellectual, IRNA said Sunday.

The statement, signed by 125 of Iran's 290 MPs, blasted the "unjust measures taken by university disciplinary committees and certain security, police and judicial services against student leaders."

The MPs asked Khatami, who heads the Supreme Council for National Security that ordered committees to take harsher measures, to ensure there was more leniency.

Last November, Iranian students staged a series of large demonstrations to protest against the sentencing to death on November 6 of dissident professor Hashem Aghajari, who questioned the right to rule of Iran's Shiite Muslim clergy.

In total, some 40 students in Tehran and elsewhere were called to appear before courts or disciplinary committees, MP and former student leader Ali Akbar Musavi-Khoeini said.

Of them, two were sentenced to 50 lashes, one was handed a one year suspended prison sentence, eight were banned from attending courses for several months, three were forced to change university and one expelled.

Twenty-six others are still waiting to hear their punishment, the MP added.

Aghajari, a veteran of the 1979 Islamic revolution, had called in a speech for a reformation within Islam and said Muslims did not have to follow their religious leaders blindly.

Aghajari's sentencing by a Hamedan court angered even some conservatives, and in the face of the student unrest supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the case to be reconsidered on November 17.

Iran's supreme court overturned the death sentence against Aghajari on February 14, but he is to be retried by the same court that ordered his execution.

[knighthawk]

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