WASHINGTON – The wife of a hunger-striking Iranian journalist, Akbar Ganji, has offered her condolences to the family of the judge who sentenced her husband to six years in prison after he was gunned down yesterday by assassins on motorcycles.

Massoud Moghaddas was shot dead yesterday outside a Tehran court building, according to Iran’s judiciary. The style of the murder resembled previous assassinations carried out by the regime’s intelligence service. By openly expressing her sympathy toward the judge’s family, Mr. Ganji’s wife, Massoumeh Shafieh, may have been trying to dispel any perception that her husband’s supporters might have committed the violent crime to seek retribution on the supreme leader.

“Massoud Moghaddas … was shot and martyred leaving the court building,” judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad told Reuters news agency yesterday. “We do not know anything about the identity of the assassin.”

In January 2001, Moghaddas sentenced Mr. Ganji to six years in prison for publishing a book and articles that alleged leaders of the Islamic Republic were responsible for a chain of murders of intellectuals in the late 1990s.

Mr. Ganji has been starving himself since June 11, when he was rearrested after having been granted a brief medical leave from prison. He was sent back to Evin Prison for telling Rooz Online that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should run for office, and urging a boycott of Iran’s June presidential election. Since beginning his hunger strike, Mr. Ganji has stepped up his battle of words with the supreme leader, calling in open letters smuggled out of prison for his ouster in language reminiscent of Ayatollah Khomenei’s sermons against the shah before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. His boldness has inspired Iran’s democracy movement, members of which today plan to demonstrate on Mr. Ganji’s behalf in front of the U.N. mission in Tehran.

The political prisoner’s condition has deteriorated since being rushed to Milad Hospital on July 18. Ms. Shafieh on Monday told The New York Sun that her husband collapsed when he tried to stand in his hospital room. Yesterday Ms. Shafieh released an open letter offering her condolences to the family of Mr. Moghaddas after his murder. Mr. Ganji in his manifestos has embraced the principle of nonviolent political action.

The murder of the judge who sentenced Mr. Ganji comes as violent opposition has increased inside Iran. In the run-up to the June presidential elections, bombs were detonated in front of government buildings. More recently, martial law has been declared in some of the country’s Kurdish provinces street riots in response to the slaying of Kurdish teenager. Reports have also surfaced that petroleum workers and other laborers have called strikes after not being paid for several months.