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Iran minister’s Oxford doctorate a fake

Oxford University has released a statement confirming that the Iranian Interior Minister has never received a degree from Oxford despite the minister’s claims to the contrary.

On Wednesday an official statement was published which said, “the University of Oxford has no record of Mr Ali Kordan receiving an honorary doctorate or any other degree from the University”.

Mr Ali Kordan had flaunted the degree prior to his appointment earlier in August. However, it has since come to light that the degree certificate he claimed was legitimate is in fact a fake which contains spelling mistakes and clumsily-worded sentences.

In fact, these errors only fully came to light when the Interior Ministry made a copy of the degree public in an effort to silence doubters. It was dated 2000 and had an Oxford seal.

One sentence in the fake degree claimed that Ali Kordan had “shown a great effort in preparing educational materials and his research in the domain of comparative law,that has opened a new chapter,not only in our university,but, to our knowledge,in this country” – with poorly-spaced punctuation.

The degree was also signed by three academics. Oxford confirmed that they had, at some stage, all held posts at the University, but never in the field of Law and furthermore, none of them would have signed degree doctorates.

The revelation has caused a flurry of media attention around the Interior Minister in Iran, with reports of the bogus doctorate appearing in newspapers and on websites. The news has been particularly popular with bloggers keeping tabs on Iranian politics.

During Mr Kordan’s confirmation debate, which took place before his appointment, a number of lawmakers in Iran had questioned the legitimacy of his Oxford degree and argued he was unqualified for the post.

Despite the statement from Oxford, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defended Kordan’s suitability for the role and also described degrees in general as “torn paper”.

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