The Iranian judiciary had started to take steps to...

The Iranian judiciary had started to take steps to quash the death sentence re-imposed on dissident intellectual Hashem Aghajari, following orders from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the official IRNA news agency reported. "The first steps have been taken to revoke the verdict," said Abdolreza Izadpanah, deputy head of the judicial authority. He did not elaborate. Aghajari, a history professor at Tehran University and a disabled war veteran, was convicted of blasphemy by a judge in Hamedan for calling for a reformation in Iran's state Shiite Muslim religion. He also said Muslims were not "monkeys" and "should not blindly follow" religious leaders.