| The lawyer for Iranian dissident Hashem Aghajari says Iran’s hard-line judiciary has dropped a blasphemy charge against his client that carried the death penalty. The lawyer says Mr. Aghajari, a disabled war veteran and history lecturer, still faces sentencing on lesser charges that could bring a five-year prison sentence. Mr. Aghajari was originally sentenced to death for a speech in which he criticized the rule of clerics in the Islamic republic. But early this month, the Iranian Supreme Court revoked the death sentence handed down by a provincial court in 2002, and ordered a re-trial in a court in Tehran. That hearing began Monday. |