Dissident Iranian professor Hashem Aghajari, under...

Dissident Iranian professor Hashem Aghajari, under sentence of death for blasphemy, rejected a court order for his mental health to be examined by doctors, his wife said.
"The supreme court has decided that Aghajari be examined by five legal specialist physicians to test his mental balance," Zahra Behnudi said, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
"My husband considers this a new accusation against him and will not attend the medical test," she added, claiming the judiciary wanted to pass her husband off as a madman.
"He is in good health and as a university professor and religious intellectual considers these accusations inappropriate," Behnudi said.
Aghajari, a veteran of the 1979 Islamic revolution, was sentenced to death on November 6, 2002 for questioning the right to rule of Iran's Shiite Muslim clergy.
He had called in a speech for a reformation within Islam and said Muslims did not have to follow their religious leaders blindly.
Iran's supreme court overturned the death sentence against Aghajari on February 14, but he is to be retried by the same court that ordered his execution.
Behnudi said her husband refused to attend any hearing behind closed doors and added he would only appear at a public trial in the presence of a jury.
She also protested husband's continuing imprisonment and said "his death sentence has been quashed, but the court has not yet replied to our request for his temporary release on bail. We hoped very much that he would be freed on bail on the eve of the Iranian new year," marked on March 21.
Aghajari's sentencing by a court in Hamadan angered even some conservatives. In the face of student unrest, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the case to be reconsidered on November 17, 2002.