Iranian dissident Hashem Aghajari, whose death sentence...

Iranian dissident Hashem Aghajari, whose death sentence for blasphemy was quashed on February 14, will be retried by the same court which ordered his execution and could face the same penalty, a judiciary spokesman said.
"It's possible that the new verdict will be the same as the original one," said newly-appointed spokesman Gholamhossein Elham, who is considered a hardliner even within the conservative- dominated judiciary.
"It's the court of first instance (in the western city of Hamedan) ... which must correct procedural failings and issue a new judgement," he told the official news agency IRNA.
Iran's supreme court overturned the death sentence against Aghajari pronounced on November 6 after he questioned the right to rule of Iran's Shiite Muslim clergy.
The sentence had sparked the biggest demonstrations in Tehran since a wave of deadly student unrest in 1999, and protests even by some conservatives.
Aghajari, a university teacher and veteran of the 1979 Islamic revolution, had called in a speech for a reformation within Islam and said Muslims did not have to follow their religious leaders blindly.
Elham explained that the supreme court's judgement only covered the death sentence, which he said was overturned due to failed procedure and sent back to the lower court.
A Hamedan appeal court would deal with the other penalties handed down, including 74 lashes, eight years of internal exile and 10 years' deprivation of the right to teach, he said.
The supreme court's ruling on Aghajari came at a time of an apparent truce on the political battlefront between the reformist and conservative camps in the Islamic republic.
Meanwhile, legislation planned by the pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami to limit the conservatives' control of state institutions, notably the judiciary, is still being considered by the reformist parliament.
On the international front, the European Union, with which Iran has launched a political and trade dialogue, has been closely monitoring the Aghajari affair.
Observers so far expressed doubts that the death sentence will ever be carried out, although the latest statement from the judiciary could test the truce between Iran's rival political factions.