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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryIranian prisonersInternational and internal pressure has been critical in the recent release from prison of Hashem Aghajari, an Iranian political science professor and veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. Aghajari had received a death sentence in 2002 for giving a speech in which he called on each citizen to interpret religious texts for himself or herself instead of following the Shiite principle of "imitation." After several days of student protests against this death sentence, the case was sent back to the original court. A year later, the court announced the exact same verdict. This time, however, faced with the mass outcry in Iran, the Supreme Court threw out the death sentence. The new verdict sentences him to five years in prison and bans him from teaching and publishing for another five years. He has now been released from prison on $116,000 bail and will be appealing the verdict. There are many other intellectuals and students who are still languishing in prison. Ahmad Batebi, a 25-year-old student was jailed after a picture of him holding the bloody shirt of his fellow student was put on the cover of THE ECONOMIST in 1999. Despite having become deaf in one ear and physically disabled as a result of severe beatings, he has continued to speak to reporters during the two brief periods in which authorities have allowed him to visit his family. Batebi and 12 other political prisoners recently held a 21-day hunger strike at the notorious Evin prison. It was led by Nasser Zarafshan, a lawyer arrested in 2002 for representing the families of dissidents murdered in 1998. --Sheila Sahar |
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