TEHRAN – In a decree issued on Monday, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei announced that donation of the Islamic Azad University’s properties for public purposes was unlawful.

Two groups made up of legal experts and jurisprudents were assigned to carry out a thorough investigation into the case, Ayatollah Khamenei said in a letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as chairman of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCCR) and Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic Azad University.
The final result was that such donation has “major legal and jurisprudential problems,” the Leader stated in the letter.
And the university's board of founders did not have the jurisdiction to make such a decision, the Leader added.
The Islamic Azad University announced last year that it had endowed all properties of the university. The move provoked strong protest by the administration which had previously claimed the control of the university.
Afterwards, the Supreme Leader tasked the Judiciary with verifying the compliance of the endowment with the law and sharia (Islamic law).