An Iran Roundup
A number of stories concerning Iran have come out recently, and I want to have the chance to gather them in one post.
This article discusses the abrupt ending of the trial surrounding the murder of Zahra Kazemi:
Iran?s hardline judiciary abruptly ended the trial on Sunday of an intelligence agent accused of killing a Canadian journalist, prompting angry lawyers to complain key evidence had been ignored or covered up.
A verdict is expected in a week or so.
Foreign diplomats and journalists were barred from the third day of the trial of the agent, Mohammad Reza Aqdam, over the death last July of Zahra Kazemi, 54, a photographer of Iranian origin who was detained after taking pictures of a Tehran jail.
Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Peace laureate, said the judge had ignored testimony that might have incriminated a judiciary official.
The case has damaged Iran?s relations with Canada, which announced the withdrawal of its ambassador last week, and turned an international spotlight on Iran?s judiciary and prisons.
It has also exposed deep rifts between President Mohammad Khatami?s reformist government and the judiciary which is run by his hardline opponents.
?I?m so angry I cannot speak. They didn?t even pay attention to our evidence and announced the end of the trial,? Ebadi, who was representing Kazemi?s family, said outside the Tehran court.
?This is not a fair trial. The case hasn?t been reviewed. If they issue a verdict it will be unfair,? she added.
This story follows up:
A hard-line prosecutor has ordered Iranian newspapers to censor their coverage of a trial of a secret agent accused of murdering an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, journalists said Monday.
Speaking to government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh after his weekly press conference, several reporters said Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi called their offices and told them to not report on parts of the trial, which ended abruptly Sunday.
One journalist said Mortazavi told him, ?It?s in your interest to consider the murder trial over and avoid publishing things that you should not.?
Hard-liners were angered after a legal team representing the mother of slain photojournalist Zahra Kazemi accused prison official Mohammad Bakhshi of inflicting the fatal blow to Kazemi, and accused the hard-line judiciary of illegally detaining her.
Most Iranian newspapers have not published the accusations against Bakhshi and the prosecution, apparently fearing retribution.
?I was afraid to publicly put this to you during the press conference because I was afraid of possible punishment from Mortazavi,? one of the journalists told Ramezanzadeh.
?Mortazavi called our newspaper Sunday to say we have to delete parts of the trial where lawyers implicated Bakhshi in the murder,? she said.
Ramezanzadeh said imposing such restrictions on newspapers was illegal.
?Restricting approved freedoms is against the constitution,? Ramezanzadeh told reporters.
The judiciary ordered two reformist publications to shut down Saturday, when the trial opened. Sources at the newspapers said officials appeared upset with an article one of them published last week about Kazemi?s death.
A former judge, Mortazavi is widely seen as the man behind the closure of more than 100 pro-democracy publications the past four years.
And finally, we have this story concerning the fate of academic dissident Hashem Aghajari:
Iran?s hardline judiciary sentenced dissident academic Hashem Aghajari to five years in prison on Tuesday for saying Muslims should not blindly follow their clerical leaders like ?monkeys,? his lawyer said.
The sentence marked a major climb down by the judiciary which originally condemned Aghajari to death for blasphemy after making the speech in 2002.
The death sentence, issued by a provincial court in western Iran, sparked some of the largest student protests for years and fueled international concern about restrictions on free speech in the Islamic state.
The blasphemy verdict was finally overturned by the Supreme Court in June after many senior clerics said it was too harsh. A re-trial was held in Tehran earlier this month.
?The Tehran court sentenced him to five years in prison for insulting Islamic values,? Aghajari?s lawyer Saleh Nikbakht told Reuters.
Posted by Pejman at July 23, 2004 04:26 PM
http://www.command-post.org/nk/2_archives/013792.html