Iran paper promises prize for killing of dissident
TEHRAN, Sept 11 (Reuters) - A hardline Iranian weekly said on Saturday
it would offer a $33,000 prize for the head of a dissident intellectual
if a senior Moslem cleric ordered his killing for questioning Islamic principles.
The weekly Jebheh said it would donate 100 million rials for the ``revolutionary
execution'' of Hossein Baqerzadeh, a London-based human rights activist,
if any ranking cleric issued a fatwa, or religious edict, condemning him
to death as an apostate.
Baqerzadeh has come under attack by conservatives for advocating the
abolition of the death penalty in a newspaper article.
A hardline-led court this month closed down the outspoken liberal daily
Neshat for carrying Baqerzadeh's article, saying the article questioned
a central tenet of Islamic justice.
Iranian Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Ataollah Mohajerani on
Saturday ridiculed the bounty offer.
``Baqerzadeh is not an apostate,'' Mohajerani, an outspoken liberal,
told reporters. ``No religious scholar would issue such an edict.
``But we would welcome receiving this money to help newspapers facing
financial difficulties,'' he said.
An Iranian religious foundation has offered $2.8 million to anyone who
carries out a 1989 fatwa by the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini for the killing of British author Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemy
in his book 'The Satanic Verses'.
Khomeini's successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned
after the publication of Baqerzadeh's article that questioning the Islamic
law of retribution, summed up in the injunction ``an eye for an eye,''
was akin to apostasy, punishable by death.
($1-3,000 rials at the official exchange rate)
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