November 17, 2002	Sunday	Ramazan 11, 1423

TEHRAN, Nov 16: Iran’s largest pro-reform protests for three years gathered momentum on Saturday when students began a week-long class boycott in support of a dissident academic on death row for insulting Islam.

The student protests, which started a week ago, have inflamed a tense political standoff in the country between pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami and mostly self-appointed conservatives who control key levers of power.

Further pressure was heaped on the judiciary by prominent conservatives, among them a grandson of former revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who called the verdict against history lecturer Hashem Aghajari heavy-handed.

In a meeting with Aghajari’s family on Friday night Hassan Khomeini said the death sentence was disproportionate and expressed hope that the judiciary would rectify it soon, the official news agency IRNA reported.

Aghajari, a veteran of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war in which he lost a leg, has refused to appeal saying he is “ready to die”. In theory, the sentence could be carried about 20 days after he was officially informed on Nov 13.

Analysts say the case has handed reformists a rallying cry and left hardliners facing a dilemma between carrying out the unpopular sentence or giving in to public outrage.

They say the recent tension is a foretaste of things to come as Khatami tries to curb the power of two key pillars of conservative influence — the judiciary and the veto- wielding Guardian Council — through two bills before parliament.

Reformists have called on Khatami to make good on his threat to resign if, as expected, the Guardian Council blocks the proposed legislation.

At the Amir Kabir technical university in Tehran, where more than 7,000 students are enrolled, all classes were cancelled on Saturday and hundreds gathered in front of lecture halls to listen to speeches denouncing Aghajari’s sentence.

“We’re going to boycott classes for a week to press for our demands,” one of the organisers, who gave only his first name, Sajjad, said.

He said more universities were expected to join the class boycott in coming days in the largest sustained political protests in the country of 65 million people since a similar wave of rallies were suppressed in 1999.

At the Tarbiat-i-Modarres teacher training university in Tehran, where Aghajari used to work, 20 out of 22 department chiefs resigned saying they did not feel secure in the light of his sentence, the student news agency ISNA reported.

So far, the student protests have been peaceful as police have restricted them to the university campuses and kept away radical Islamic militia groups who in the past have tried to violently break up such meetings.

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi is likely to be quizzed about the Aghajari in Brussels, where he is due to meet senior European Union officials, including EU Commission President Romano Prodi, during a two-day visit starting on Monday.—Reuters