Around 2,500 students gathered at a Tehran university...

Around 2,500 students gathered at a Tehran university burst into prolonged applause when a speaker announced Hashem Aghajari's decision not to appeal his death sentence for blashpemy. "He's doing the right thing because it's the best way to prove it's a political sentence and has no legal basis," one student, who gave only his first name Mahmoud, told Reuters. But in a terse statement on November 11, the judiciary defended the verdict. "The judiciary considers the court's legal procedure lawful and void of any problem. It believes any objection to the ruling should be made only through legal channels," it said.