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Home > World > Middle East | Topic: Human Rights

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Iran Judiciary Arrests Leading Human Rights Lawyer

Reuters
 Jul 30, 2005

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin (R) stands next to the member of the Center of Defenders of Human Rights in Iran, lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani (L), 11 December 2003 in Paris, after awarding him with the Human Rights Prize of the French republic. (Jean-Loup Gautreau/AFP/Getty Images)
High-resolution image (307 x 192 px, 300 dpi)

TEHRAN - Iran's conservative judiciary has arrested a leading human rights lawyer who was acting in two cases that have sparked international interest, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said on Saturday.

Ebadi, herself a rights lawyer, said she had no idea why her colleague Abdolfattah Soltani was arrested.

"He was arrested by people who introduced themselves as working for the Revolutionary Prosecutor," she told Reuters.

"I have nothing to say other than it is highly regrettable," she added.

Soltani had been acting on behalf of hunger-striking dissident journalist Akbar Ganji, imprisoned after linking several officials to the murders of dissident intellectuals.

A letter, supposedly from Ganji, this week broke one of Iran's most deeply rooted taboos by calling on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to step down.

Enraged conservatives wanted to know how such a letter reached the outside world.

Soltani is also a member of the legal team trying to unearth the truth behind the death of Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian -Iranian photojournalist who died in detention in Tehran's feared Evin prison in 2003.