(WiPC/IFEX) – Students Mohammad-Reza Namnabati, Abbas Nemati, and Ali-Reza Aqaii were sentenced on 3 November 1999 to suspended sentences. This means that so long as they do not “re-offend” they will not have to go to jail. **Updates IFEX alert of 29 October 1999** Namnabati and Nemati, the authors of the play, were given three-year […]
(WiPC/IFEX) – Students Mohammad-Reza Namnabati, Abbas Nemati, and Ali-Reza
Aqaii were sentenced on 3 November 1999 to suspended sentences. This means
that so long as they do not “re-offend” they will not have to go to jail.
**Updates IFEX alert of 29 October 1999**
Namnabati and Nemati, the authors of the play, were given three-year
suspended terms; Aqaii was given a six-month suspended sentence. The
academic who was accused of having supported the play, Mehdi Sajadehchi, was
acquitted.
The students had appeared before an Islamic court in Tehran on 20 October,
charged with having “offended the Imam Mahdi” and “the values of the Islamic
Revolution as well as its martyrs” in a satirical play they published, The
Entrance Exam and the Time of Resurrection. Some Iranians had called for
them to receive death sentences. Ayatollah Khamenei, however, had called on
the court to consider mitigating circumstances in its verdict. He has also
issued an edict prohibiting Muslims from taking matters into their own hands
and killing the students.
