[2] Hashem Aghajari served in the Iran-Iraq War where he lost his right leg below the knee,[3] and his brother.

The trial was criticized not only for its harshness but for falling "far short of international standards of due process," being "conducted behind closed doors", and giving the defendant "only limited access to his lawyer.

"[7] According to the conservative newspaper Jumhuri Eslami, the Supreme Leader's order was (at first) "flagrantly" ignored by prosecutor general Abdolnabi Namazi.

The Iranian parliament, President Mohammad Khatami, and Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri[4] condemned it.

[20] The failure of Iran's Hezbollah paramilitaries to make "a serious attempt to break up" the peaceful reformist student protests over the sentence was thought to be associated with Supreme Leader Khamenei's implicit criticism of the sentence and the "impartiality" of his failing to side with conservative hardliners.