Iran Blasts Oxford Tribute to Dead Protester

Regime lodges protest against Neda Soltan scholarship
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 11, 2009 4:25 AM CST
Iran Blasts Oxford Tribute to Dead Protester
This May 2009 file photo shows Neda Agha Soltan, whose death was captured on amateur video during the protests over Iran's disputed election.   (AP Photo/Courtesy Caspian Makan, File)

The Iranian regime has condemned Oxford University's offering of a scholarship in the name of a young woman killed in protests earlier this year as a politically motivated move staged by its enemies. The scholarship is named after Neda Soltan, a 26-year-old philosophy student who became the symbol of the Iranian protests after photographs and a video of her dying were viewed around the world.

The Iranian regime—which blamed Soltan's death on British security forces, other protesters, and even the BBC—charged that that the scholarship will "undermine" Oxford's "scientific credibility," the Times of London reports. The scholarship's first recipient, a young woman of Iranian descent, offered condolences to Soltan's family. "I hope that in succeeding in my studies at Oxford I can do justice to the name of their brave and gifted daughter," she said.
(More Neda Soltan stories.)

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