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Iran's Ganji Gets Prison Term Cut
TEHRAN, May 15 (News Agencies) - A Tehran appeals court has slashed the 10-year sentence on maverick pro-reform journalist Akbar Ganji to six months, paving the way for his imminent release from prison, his lawyer said Tuesday.
Gholam-Ali Riyahi also said the court had overturned the further five years of internal exile in a remote area that Ganji had originally been ordered to serve after his decade in prison, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The news comes just three weeks before voters are expected to give a second term in office to President Mohammad Khatami, whose pro-reform supporters widely see Ganji as a hero.
Ganji rocked Iranian society by implicating former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, as well as former intelligence chief Ali Fallahian, in the 1998 murders of several dissidents and intellectuals.
His attorney said the appeals court had upheld the charge of disseminating propaganda "against the system" but that a battery of other convictions, including acting against state security, had been overturned.
Riyahi said he expected Ganji, who has already served 13 months in jail since his April 2000 arrest, to be released "soon."
But a judiciary official said that Ganji was still to face trial on charges a number of charges, including defamation and publishing insults and lies, in his speeches, books and articles.
The official, who asked not to be identified, said the courts were still investigating the charges.
Ganji was imprisoned after returning from Berlin, where he attended a controversial conference on the future of reforms in Iran that sparked widespread outrage among officials here.
Tehran's revolutionary court sentenced him in January on a variety of charges, including attending the "un-Islamic" Berlin conference.
The court charged that the gathering, which was disrupted by Iran's exiled opposition, was aimed at overthrowing the Iranian clerical regime.
It had been organized by a foundation with links to Germany's Greens party, and Berlin summoned Iran's ambassador to protest after the verdicts were announced in January.
Nine other people were convicted over the conference, including Said Sadr, a translator for the German embassy in Tehran who also got a 10-year sentence.
All appealed the verdict, and there has been no word as yet on where those appeals stand.
Six other people were acquitted.
The Ganji case electrified Iran's political scene, particularly after he used a court appearance last year to directly name Fallahian, who had been identified in Ganji's writings only as the "master key" behind the killings.
The intelligence ministry acknowledged that rogue agents, two of whom were later sentenced to death, were behind the assassinations but denied that any top officials had been involved.
Said Emami, the agent named as the mastermind behind the killings, was reported to have committed suicide in prison.
Fallahian, who has presented himself as a candidate for the June 8th presidential election, has denied any role in the murders.
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