Thousands of Iranian university students defiantly stepped up protests demanding greater freedom of speech today, but were met with another brief attack by hardline vigilantes.
At least 5,000 activists massed at Tehran's Sharif university for the latest in a series of overtly political rallies that were sparked by the sentencing to death for blasphemy of pro-reform academic Hashem Aghajari.
The rally, the largest since protests over the verdict began on November 9th, was broken up after Islamic extremists set about punching and kicking the protestors in the campus auditorium.
A number of students suffered light head injuries while a briefly successful attempt to take to the streets outside by some 500 students was blocked by police. At least 15 people were seen being detained during the day.
In the face of mounting demonstrations and a chorus of criticism of the Aghajari verdict, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday ordered the hardline-controlled judiciary to revise its ruling.
But a student leader said the intervention did not go far enough in satisfying wider, bolder student demands.
"Our problem is not only the revision of the death sentence on Hashem Aghajari, but freedom of speech and freedom in general," declared Abdollah Momeni, a leader of the Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU) student group.
AFP