This could prove very interesting in the weeks to come.

Pro-reform students held protests despite an order over the weekend by the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to an appeals court to review the case, using language that indicated that the death sentence might be dismissed.



More than 4,000 students came out to march today, the Iranian Student News Agency said, and student leaders said their demands went beyond Mr. Aghajari's release. They said they would press for the release of all political prisoners and for a guarantee of freedom of speech.

"We demand unconditional release of Mr. Aghajari but demand freedom of speech and opinion for everyone and forever," Abdullah Momeni, one of the speakers at the university today, said in a telephone interview afterward.

Mr. Momeni added that the students did not consider apostasy, the charge against Mr. Aghajari, a crime. He said the judiciary, which generally supports the hard-liners in the government, was acting like courts in the Middle Ages.

"Apostasy has no meaning in the world today, which favors freedom of speech and opinion," he said.