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Shirin Ebadi, a former Iranian judge who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 but who now lives in the UK, believes that if she returned to Tehran “Iranian people would welcome me, but the intelligence services would come to arrest me with handcuffs.” Asked by EUobserver if Iran would hang her, she said: “I don’t know.” Her statement, in Brussels last Thursday (13 March), shows how little she thinks Iran has changed despite the election of President Hassan Rohani, a moderate, and despite the warming up in EU-Iran ties. […] According to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, an Iranian NGO,...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian security forces made a wave of new arrests Tuesday, including Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi's sister and a relative of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, pressing forward with a broadening crackdown on the reformist movement in the wake of deadly protests this week.

Less than a year after authorities stormed the offices of Iranian human-rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, taking sensitive documents and her computer, unidentified authorities have now allegedly taken the Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma from Ebadi's bank safety deposit box, said officials in Norway, which administers the prize. Outraged officials in Oslo say the incident is unprecedented and has sent shock waves through the Norwegian foreign ministry. “This is the first time a Nobel Peace Prize has been confiscated by national authorities," Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement posted to his agency's website. "The medal and...

Not many revolutionaries dress in a lilac tweed suit but then not many have the charisma of Shirin Ebadi, who won a Nobel prize for her human rights work in Iran and is now on a mission to garner support for prisoners held in her country. Ebadi, 62, made a passionate plea for the West to show support for the opposition in Iran as the regime continued its crackdown on the reform movement, which continued to mount street protests last week. “The European Union should withdraw ambassadors,” said Ebadi, a lawyer, stabbing the air with her index finger, furious about...

Nobel Peace Prize Winners Take Aim at U.S. By CHASE SQUIRES, AP DENVER (Sept. 17) - Ten Nobel Peace Prize laureates chbishop called for world peace and took aim at U.S. policy makers, asking an enthusiastic crowd of 7,000 youth to demand that the United States pull back its military, spread its wealth and offer aid to developing countries. The Archbishop Desmond Tutu had stern words for the Bush administration. "Then how can you commit Guantanamo Bay? Take back your country," he said. Only the Dalai Lama, whose speech at the three-day PeaceJam convention at the University of Denver was...

You can help to spread Ganji and Mohammadi's voice. We need to email news clips from papers like Latimes about Ganji to all of the news papers, TV stations, United Nations ambassadors, government officials, members of congress and parliaments all around the world. We need to inform media to broadcast the news about Ganji and Mohammadi and ask the officials to put pressure on Iranian regime to free Ganji, Mhammadi and other political prisoners. We need your help if you are in USA, Canada, or Europe. here is what I need you to do. set up an alias email address...

Iranian authorities have raided the house of the country's best-known dissident, Akbar Ganji, supporters and relatives of the jailed writer say. His daughter telephoned a family friend during the raid who described her as being "very terrified". Mr Ganji has been on a hunger strike for 59 days and both his lawyer and his wife have urged him to end the protest. He was jailed in 2001 over articles linking Iranian leaders with a series of political killings in the 1990s. The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says it is not clear why the authorities raided the house when Mr...

7/26/05 Iran: Shirin Ebadi tells Appeals Court Zahra Kazemi's death was "deliberate murder" Tehran, July 25, IRNA-Appeals Court presided over by judge Alizadeh held a session on Monday in the presence of defendant security officer M.A. and his lawyer, representative of the prosecutor and four lawyers on behalf of Zahra Kazemi's family. Zahra Kazemi, Iranian photojournalist living in Canada, died in custody in 2003. She had been arrested for taking photos from Evin prison. Kazemi's family filed suit with Judiciary against prison officers and legal proceedings indicated that "either her head struck a hard material or the material struck her...

PALO ALTO, Calif. - The Iranian human rights lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize blamed American foreign policy for increasing terrorism. Speaking yesterday at the Stanford Law School graduation, Shirin Ebadi offered no criticism of the government of Iran, which the State Department calls the leading sponsor of international terrorism. She did, however, offer a series of critical remarks about the Bush administration. "As we can see, the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East has but increased the acts of terrorism, and even in the United States you are not free of fear," she...

DAKAR (IRNA) -- President Mohammad Khatami rejected Saturday U.S. charges of human rights violations in Iran, denouncing Washington's own record in abusing prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba. "Of all the people entitled to speak about human rights, we don't regard the Americans as having the right to talk about the respect for human rights in Iran," he told reporters here. The United States was quoted Thursday as having expressed 'grave concern' over the human rights situation in Iran and potential court action against 2003 Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Khatami said, "I believe the Americans' claims of human rights...

RIO DE JANEIRO, July 5 (AFP) - The US war in Iraq is "lawless, cowardly and barbaric" 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, said in an interview published Monday. "The Iraqis have no water nor electricity in the cities," she told Brazil's O Globo newspaper."But oil continues to flow as never before. "If the United States really had the goal of protecting Iraq's democracy, it would have done something else," the Iranian lawyer said. The human rights defender recalled that Iraq had launched a seven-year war on Iran."At that time, Saddam (Hussein, the ousted Iraqi leader) was...

Nobel Winner Criticizes US Invasion of Iraq, Prison Abuse SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP)--In much of the world's view, the U.S. has replaced the former Soviet Union as the global bully by its invasion of Iraq and mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said Monday. Ebadi, the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, was unequivocal that the U.S. should withdraw its troops from Iraq immediately and let the Iraqis rule themselves. "I believe this wasn't a justified war to begin with," Ebadi said in an interview with The...

Nobel peace prize winner is wearing black for women around world to mourn for their rights. GENEVA - Nobel peace prize winner and Iranian human rights campaigner Shirin Ebadi declared Monday that the women's movement would be a force for change in her country because the fight for sexual equality was a fight for democracy. During a debate on women's rights organised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Ebadi blamed discrimination against women in Iran on the patriarchal nature of society, rather than Islam or religion. "This patriarchal culture is a tribal culture. Not only does it not accept women,...

By: Setare Kaviyan For the first time in history an Iranian woman named Shirin Ebadi has been awarded with the Noble Peace Prize. This great accomplishment by Miss Ebadi was the cause of utmost bliss and pride amongst the Iranians. Iranians began seeing a new light of hope with Miss Ebadi’s accomplishment, and they believed that through her, human rights could once again be brought to Iran. Ms. Ebadi’s record was quite impressive; with being a judge during the previous regime and working diligently on human rights in Iran, particularly on the rights of women and children. With all these...

The secret is finally out. In 2003, the world finally discovered the Iranian women, something that the Iranian men had discovered thousands of years ago! The purpose of this article is to discuss the progress of Iranian women in 2003 and its local and global consequences in the hope of saving the beautiful planet earth from a catastrophe that’s in the making! In September 2003, Shirin Ebadi was announced as the winner of Nobel Peace Prize. The Iranian women welcomed the news with great enthusiasm. The Iranian men had no choice but to follow suit! Over 10,000 women poured into...

note: Please send this to everyone you know! Free Iran at ActivistChat.com! In July 2003, Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured and murdered by Iranian security agents after she attempted to report on the growing opposition movement in Iran. FRONTLINE/World correspondent Jane Kokan risks her personal safety to follow in Kazemi's footsteps, traveling undercover to Iran to investigate the clerical regime's latest crackdown on students, journalists and dissidents. "I want to find out what happened to [Kazemi]," says Kokan, "and the story she died trying to tell." The Story Reporter, Student protest, Women about to be hung Check back Monday...

Spare a thought for us -- first (EBADI's WASTED OPPORTUNITY!) Free Iran at ActivistChat.com! By Ardavan Bahrami December 15, 2003 The Iranian A few days ago I received an email from a friend whom I have never met in person but have been chatting and exchanging views with on Iranian current affairs. The email contained a note from an Iranian gentleman/lady who had commented on Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace prize speech. The note was most refreshing and above all extremely courageous. Consequently, my journalistic conscience told me that such a fresh viewpoint should not be ignored. As I do not...

TURN ON CSPAN RIGHT NOW!!!!

Nobel winner Ebadi takes swipe at U.S. in accepting Peace Prize Thursday, December 11, 2003 at 07:00 JSTOSLO — Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, seized the opportunity to accuse the United States of using the Sept 11 attacks to justify violating international law and human rights."In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext," Ebadi said in her acceptance speech Wednesday, without mentioning the United States...

Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, used the ceremony in Oslo yesterday to send a tough anti-war message to President George Bush's government in Washington. The 56-year-old Iranian lawyer and human rights campaigner, her country's first female judge before being stripped of the job in 1979 following the Islamic revolution, told the audience that it was worrying when human rights were violated by the Western democracies that had first introduced the principles. Without citing the United States by name, she singled out the Iraq war and the treatment of "illegal combatants" in the prison...