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Iran's leading dissident freed from jail

Posted on: Saturday, 18 March 2006, 08:54 CST

By Saeed Komeijani

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's most prominent political dissident, Akbar Ganji, has been released after six years in prison for criticizing some of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Republic, his lawyer said on Saturday.

Ganji, a journalist, was jailed in 2000 for articles linking senior officials to the serial killings of dissidents in 1998.

His articles particularly targeted influential cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's president from 1989 to 1997.

A smiling but thin and heavily-bearded Ganji welcomed reporters into his Tehran apartment.

He stuck to pleasantries and sidestepped politics. "Thanks for coming," he said. "I am so sorry it is such a small place."

Lawyer Youssef Mowlaie told Reuters Ganji was freed late on Friday. He predicted a legal wrangle over whether Ganji would be returned to Tehran's feared Evin prison for a few more days.

Mowlaie said he reckoned Ganji's jail term ended on March 17, but a senior judiciary official disagreed.

"Currently, he is on leave and his sentence will end on March 30," Mahmoud Salarkia, deputy prosecutor-general for prison affairs, told the official IRNA news agency.

Salarkia said Ganji was allowed to return home for a week to mark the Iranian New Year holiday which starts on Monday night, but Ganji's wife insisted her husband was home for good.

Iran rejected Ganji's allegations that senior officials were responsible for the dissidents' killings, blaming "rogue elements" within the Intelligence Ministry.

Nine agents received prison terms. The ring-leader died in jail after drinking hair-remover in what court officials said was a suicide.

Ganji spent stints in solitary confinement and fell gravely ill in July, weakened by a hunger strike aimed at persuading authorities to release him. The reporter's case sparked outrage from the United States and European Union.

Ganji, born in 1959, was a devoted follower of the 1979 Islamic revolution and served in the hardline Revolutionary Guards. He has been criticized for his propaganda work and his surveillance of Iranian student activities in Turkey.

However, his political views changed sharply and his letters from prison broke two of Iran's biggest taboos, both criticizing the system of clerical rule and leveling personal attacks on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

(Additional reporting by Alireza Ronaghi)

Source: REUTERS

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