TERHAN, Iran, May 10 (UPI) -- Hashem Aghajari, an Iranian academic charged with blasphemy, has been sentenced to death, his lawyer said Monday.
The BBC reported attorney Saleh Nikbakht said the death penalty was originally passed on his client in 2002 for saying Muslims "should not blindly follow" religious leaders.
The Iranian Supreme Court had annulled the original sentence and sent the case back to the provincial court for review. But the lower court, in Hamedan, where Aghajari made his comments, re-imposed the death penalty earlier this month.
Aghajari, who refuses to appeal in protest of the re-imposition of the sentence, has also been sentenced to a 10-year ban on teaching, eight years in jail and 74 lashes for lesser offences.
He belongs to a left-wing reformist political group, the Islamic Revolutionary Mujahidin Organization, the BBC said.
