IRAN. GUARDS SAY RUSHDIE STILL FACES EXECUTION

Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards said Salman Rushdie still faced eventual execution, 16 years after revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini imposed a death sentence on the British novelist. 
"Muslims have never accepted insults against their sacred values," the guards said two days before the anniversary of the fatwa, or religious decree, which disrupted Iran's relations with the European Union through the 1990s.
"The day will come when they will punish the apostate Rushdie for his scandalous acts and insults against the Koran and the Prophet (Mohammed)," they said in reference to his book "The Satanic Verses" which prompted Khomenei's decree.
"The imam's historic fatwa, issued in the days when the infidel leaders who champion liberal democracy and Zionism devoted all their energies to fighting Islam, is testament to Muslim greatness and the revolutionary dynamism of Koranic and Islamic thought."
The guards' comments came a month after Khomenei's successor as Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he still believed the British novelist deserved to die.
"They talk of respect for all religions but they support an apostate worthy of death like Rushdie," Khamenei complained in a message to Iranian pilgrims on January 19.