Seyyed Hashem Aghajari (, born 1957) is an Iranian historian, university professor and a critic of the government of the Islamic Republic who was sentenced to death in 2002 for apostasy for a speech he gave on Islam urging Iranians to "not blindly follow" Islamic clerics. In 2004, after domestic Iranian and international outcry, his sentence was reduced to five years in prison.
His prosecution generated large protest crowds and was seen as a "test case" in the struggle between Iranian reformists and hard-liners over the future of the Islamic Republic, with liberal reformists seeking greater freedom and hardliners defending the orthodoxy of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist. and his brother. He has been described as having an "impeccable Islamic revolutionary record."
At least prior to his speech controversy he was a history professor at Tarbiat Modares University, a teacher-training college in Tehran.
As of November 2002 he belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Mujahidin Organisation ("a left-wing" reformist political group).
Arrest, trial, imprisonment, release
He was arrested 8 August 2002, tried for a few months, and then sentenced to death in early November. The trial was criticized not only for its harshness but for falling "far short of international standards of due process," being "conducted behind closed doors", and giving the defendant "only limited access to his lawyer." Aghajari was sentenced to death for apostasy and insulting the imams of Shi'i Islam. On other charges he was sentenced to 74 lashes, 8 years in jail, and a 10-year ban on teaching activities, (though the jail sentence and ban would have been irrelevant if he was executed).
Although other controversial death sentences have been reduced on appeal, Aghajari refused to appeal the ruling, announcing through his lawyer that "those who have issued this verdict have to implement it if they think it is right or else the judiciary has to handle it."
The death sentence was denounced by many, including the Iranian parliament, President Mohammad Khatami, and Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri.
Demonstrations against the sentence began the day after it was made public on November 6. They are thought to have attracted no more than 5000 participants but nonetheless were "the most serious protests in Iran since 1999". but also a threat to use "popular forces" (Basij) against the demonstrators.
According to The Economist magazine, Supreme leader Khamenei ordered the judiciary to review Aghajari's death sentence, but "hardliners in the judiciary" (prosecutor general Abdolnabi Namazi)) "at first ignored" his order "then assigned their least lenient judges to the review."
He was later convicted on lesser charges of "insulting sacred Islamic tenets"
He was released from prison July 31, 2004 after paying a bail of $122,500, according to the Associated Press.
Explanation
According to Radio Farda the anger of regime supporters sparked by his speech might "have cost him his life" were it not for the support given him by students and academics.
The failure of Iran's Hezbollah paramilitaries to make "a serious attempt to break up" the peaceful reformist student protests over the sentence was thought to be associated with Supreme Leader Khamenei's implicit criticism of the sentence and the "impartiality" of his failing to side with conservative hardliners.
Post release statements/activities
During a seminar in 2008, he spoke out against the notion of the crime of apostasy.
In 2014, he was again arrested, tried and convicted. He was sentenced to one year in prison on the charge of "propaganda against the regime".
In an article in the July 2019 edition of the pro-reform magazine Iran-e Farda (Iran of Tomorrow), Aghajari argued that the political system of the Islamic Republic cannot be reformed and that "the relatively open" political climate of the late 1990s and early 2000s marked not the beginning of democratic reform but its limit under the Islamic regime.