Dissident Iranian Historian Summoned After Agents Search His House

Iran’s security agents searched the house of historian and university professor Hashem Aghajari before summoning him to court.

The agents ransacked the home on Sunday in spite of his not being there, ignoring pleas from his wife and daughter to wait until his return.

Aghajari, considered one of the political figures close to the Green Movement leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, was among the speakers of the "Dialogue to save Iran" conference, which was held virtually two weeks ago on the Clubhouse platform. He signed Mousavi's last statement which called to end clerical rule in Iran.

When the university professor returned home, the agents of the ministry of intelligence seized his laptop and other electronic devices, telling him that he should appear in the Revolutionary Court on Wednesday.

It is likely he will be charged with threats to state security for his role in revolutionary activity. At the recent conference, the group’s statement made bold calls for the end of the regime and called for a referendum in what it says is the only way forward, “allowing the people to decide their own destiny”.

He is an all too familiar figure to the regime. In 2002, Aghajari was sentenced to death for apostasy after a speech he gave on Islam urging Iranians to "not blindly follow" Islamic clerics. In 2004, after domestic Iranian and international outcry, his sentence was reduced to five years in prison.

Keyvan Samimi, Alireza Beheshti Shirazi, Abdollah Momeni, Qorban Behzadian-Nejad, Narges Mohammadi and Alireza Hosseini Beheshti were among the other activist speakers of the online conference who were since summoned, arrested, or prosecuted.