A dissident academic whose death sentence last year sparked Iran's biggest pro-reform protests for years refused to defend himself on the first day of hisretrial for blasphemy, his lawyer said today.
Hashem Aghajari, who was sentenced to hang last year for aspeech in which he said Muslims were not monkeys to blindlyfollow the teachings of Islamic leaders, objected to the trialtaking place behind closed doors.
"As long as the court is not an open court with the presenceof legal and theological experts, I will refuse to participatein any court or defend myself," his lawyer Saleh Nikbakht quotedAghajari as saying.
The court in the western city of Hamadan has said it doesnot intend to open the sensitive trial to the public.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered areview of Aghajari's case last year after thousands of studentsstaged almost daily rallies and class boycotts to protest hisdeath sentence.
The sentence was quashed by the Supreme Court in February,but Aghajari remains in jail awaiting the results of the retrial.
Iran's hardline judiciary has been a major thorn in the sideof reformists in the Islamic Republic, jailing dozens of liberalactivists and closing down scores of newspapers in the pastthree years.