Nation & world briefing
Iran orders professor’s
death sentence lifted
Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
TEHRAN — Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader,
ordered the death sentence of a
popular reformist history professor
reversed on Sunday, amid escalat
ing demonstrations against the ver
dict at universities around the Is
lamic Republic capital.
As supreme leader, Khamenei
has the final say on all matters of
state and religion, but as of Sun
day night, the judiciary had not
publicly responded to his order.
The nation’s chief jurist, Mahmud
Hashemi-Sharudi, has requested a
meeting with Khamenei to discuss
the verdict against professor
Hashem Aghajari, who was found
guilty of apostasy, or abandoning
Iran’s Shiite Muslim faith.
Khamenei’s order came in re
sponse to an appeal by a group erf uni
versity professors, said Mehdi Karru
bi, the speaker of the Majlis, the
Iranian parliament. The Supreme
Leader has repeatedly called on Iran’s
judiciary to use caution in handing
down death sentences “to avoid giv
ing any pretext to either enemies or
friendly critics for challenges” to the
regime, state-run Iranian television
reported on Sunday.
Besides ordering Aghajari’s exe
cution on Nov. 6, a hard-line judge
handed the disabled Iran-Iraq war
veteran an eight-year prison sen
tence and 74 lashes with a leather
whip, and banned him from teach
ing for 10 years, all of which would
remain in effect if the death sen
tence were rescinded.
Aghajari was prosecuted for a
speech he gave in the western Iran
ian city of Hamadan in August, in
which he said Shiite Muslims were
not “monkeys” to blindly follow the
teachings of senior clerics.
Karrubi on Sunday urged Aghajari
to appeal his sentence “immediate
ly” to end the issue, which the pro
fessor until now has refused to do.
The death sentence has sparked a
revival of a student-led movement
for political and social reforms in
the Islamic Republic. That move
ment has been dormant since 1999,
when hardline militias crushed the
previous wave of student uprisings,
killing several protesters.
Students have become wiser
since those days, learning to
protest within the framework of
Iranian law and not riot in the
streets, said Saeed Razavifaghee, a
Tabriz University philosophy pro
fessor and former editorial board
member of the banned reformist
newspaper, No-Ruz, or New Day.
He predicted that the pro-reform
demonstrations on campuses that
started 10 days ago would continue
even if Aghajari’s death sentence
were rescinded.
© 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
Rising Israeli politician says
negotiate or exit West Bank
Carol Rosenberg
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
HAIFA, Israel — Amran Mitzna,
the mayor of Haifa and a contender
to lead Israel’s Labor Party, may be
the most tone-deaf politician to en
ter Israeli politics in years. He re
cently told visiting American Jewish
donors something they would
rather not hear: If negotiations with
the Palestinians fail, Israel should
abandon the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip.
Building Jewish settlements on
what had been Arab land, pio
neered by his own party after Is
rael’s victorious 1967 Six-Day War
with the Arabs, “was a mistake and
we have to confess it was a mis
take. It is a dream that we cannot
have today,” he said, while some in
the audience groaned.
But if opinion polls are correct,
the 57-year-old retired major gen
eral with the demeanor of a dis
tracted college professor is likely to
be the main opposition party’s
champion against Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon’s ruling right-wing
Likud Bloc.
Victory in the Jan. 28 national
poll is a long shot, to be sure. Polls
show that a Likud led by Sharon or
Foreign Minister Benjamin Ne
tanyahu is likely to win more seats
in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
But, for now, this soldier-turned
mayor who has never served in the
Knesset is poised to win the left-of
center party leadership from an
other ex-general and veteran politi
cian, former Defense Minister
Benjamin Ben Eliezer, who until
recently served with Sharon as a
junior partner in Israel’s National
Unity Government.
Mitzna has been steadily climbing
in popularity in the run-up to Tues
day’s Labor Party primary, articulat
ing a vision that has been around
for decades but sounds subversive
to some after two years of bloody
Palestinian-Israeli warfare.
Faced with the longest wave of
terrorist attacks in Israeli history,
he says, “We must fight terrorism
like there are no negotiations.
And we must negotiate like there
UC system to check
claims of applicants
Becky Bartindale
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Starting next
year, the University of California sys
tem will begin spot-checking students’
claims about their accomplishments
and personal circumstances, an at
tempt to discourage them from embel
lishing or lying on their applications as
competition for admission increases.
It’s an effort to face concerns that
some students may exaggerate their
achievements or fabricate hardship
stories because getting good grades
and test scores is no longer enough to
guarantee admission to the most
popular University of California cam
puses. The verification program is
believed to be the first such formal ef
fort in the nation.
Students applying for admission in
fall 2003 will be the first class to have
their veracity routinely tested. Cur
rently, individual campuses check
high school grades after the senior
year and any obviously suspicious
statements. But beginning in Janu
ary, an undetermined number of the
system’s freshman applicants will be
asked to provide support for elaims
about such things as activities out
side the classroom, personal achieve
ments and obstacles overcome.
David Barden, 18, a senior at Cali
fornia’s Los Gatos High School who is
in the thick of the college-application
process, said he welcomes fact-check
ing. The pressure to get into a “good”
school is intense, he said, and stu
dents might fudge the truth because
they think they haven’t done enough
or think everyone else is doing it.
“It would just make people think
twice about lying on their applica
tions,” he said. “It makes a more
even playing field.”
Although concern about student re
sume inflation is an issue nationally,
the University of California may be
the first system to take formal steps to
root out the problem, said Judy Hin
gle, director of professional develop
ment for the National Association of
College Admissions Counselors.
© 2002, San Jose Mercury News
(San Jose, Calif.). Distributed by Knight
Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
is no terrorism.”
If that means talking to Yasser
Arafat while rescue workers are
scraping up the remains of suicide
bombings, Mitzna says he’ll do it. If
it means concluding that there is
no hope for negotiations and that
the only way to achieve “separa
tion” is by removing Jewish set
tlers from the West Bank and Gaza,
he says he’ll do that, too.
© 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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