Akbar Ganji, Iran's most outstanding dissident, is in renewed danger. LAST March, during the Persian New Year holiday, Akbar Ganji, Iran's best-known political prisoner, was cracking jokes into his mobile phone at the edge of the Iranian desert. Chubby from festive dishes of polov (rice, often with lamb) and delighted to be surrounded by his family, he showered this correspondent's two-year-old son with kisses before speeding off to keep an appointment with a dissident ayatollah and return to Tehran's Evin prison by the end of his holiday probation. Nine months on, he is a sick man, severely weakened by the...