Muhammad Khatami is to be made an honorary doctor of laws by Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader who is also the university’s chancellor.

Khatami will open the university’s Institute for Iranian Studies, which will house 12,000 books donated by Sadegh Kharazi, Iran’s former ambassador to France. The collection of Iranian texts, the largest of its kind in Europe, is estimated to be worth more than £100,000.

The decision to confer the honour on Khatami has provoked criticism from human rights groups who claim thousands of Iranian citizens were jailed and tortured for their political beliefs during his eight-year term that ended last year with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The National Union of Students wants his invitation withdrawn unless Ahmad Batebi, a student jailed in 1999 during a pro-democracy protest, is freed. ...

Iranian exiles are drawing up a petition demanding St Andrews withdraw the invitation. "Thousands of people are seething about this,” said Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, a New York-based Iranian [who helped organize] the petition. “How can a man who imprisoned and oppressed thousands of students in Iran be given a degree by an academic institution?”


Only after 2 years into Mr. Khatami’s presidency, following the banning order of many newspapers and suppression of any voice for democracy, the Tehran University students’ uprising in July 1999, demanding for the freedom of speech and calling for Democratic Rights was brutally vanquished by the Regime’s military forces!
Mr. Khatami himself delivered a speech during the students’ protest which condemned their movement declaring to ”Crush any movement which would undermine the foundation of the Islamic Republic, at any cost"!