Iran's Supreme Court has revoked the death sentence imposed on a dissident academic which sparked the country's largest pro-reform protests for over three years, the official news agency IRNA reported today.
University lecturer Mr Hashem Aghajari was condemned to death last November by a hardline regional court for questioning clerical rule in a speech. His sentencing set off two months of almost daily protests led by university students.
"The death sentence against Hashem Aghajari has been overturned by the Supreme Court," IRNA quoted Ayatollah Mohammad Sajjadi, one of four Supreme Court judges who reviewed the sentence, as saying.
Sajjadi said three of the four Supreme Court judges voted to overturn the death sentence.
Aghajari's lawyer Saleh Nikbakht told Reuters he had heard "from an informed source" that the death sentence had been revoked. He said the case would be sent back to a court in Hamadan - the western city where Aghajari was convicted - for a new sentence to be issued.