Tehran, July 20 (Reuters): Iran dismissed as “fabrication and fantasy” today US suggestions that it may have been involved in the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

George W. Bush said yesterday Washington was “digging into the facts” to determine whether Iran played a role in the al Qaida attacks. A US commission investigating the attacks will detail links between Iran and al Qaida in its final report this week. The report is expected to say that several of the 19 hijackers passed through Iran on their way to the US.

Tehran acknowledges that some of the September 11 plotters may have been in Iran before the attacks but says they did so after entering the country undetected along its lengthy and porous borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Academic sentenced

Iranian academic Hashem Aghajari was sentenced to five years in prison today for saying Muslims should not blindly follow their clerical leaders like “monkeys”, his lawyer said. Aghajari was originally sentenced to death for blasphemy after making the speech in 2002.