Nobel laureate walks out of Iranian court to protest case of slain photojournalist

CREDIT: Vahid Salemi, the Associated Press
Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, who leads a legal team representing Ezzat Kazemi, the mother of Zahra Kazemi, has denounced the investigation as incomplete and inadequate and the trial as unfair. 'I am so angry I cannot speak,' she told reporters.

(Tehran, Iran-AP, July 18, 2004 3:05 PM) _ Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi walked out of court Sunday to protest proceedings in the murder of an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist and threatened to take the case to international organizations.
   Iran's hard-line judiciary on Sunday concluded the trial of a secret agent charged with killing photojournalist Zahra Kazemi. Canada's ambassador was barred from Sunday's court session, further straining Iranian-Canadian relations.
   Ebadi, leading a four-member legal team representing the mother of the slain woman, is on her first high-profile case since winning the Noble Peace Prize last year.
   Her next step in the case was not clear.
   Kazemi, a Canadian freelance journalist of Iranian origin, died July 10, 2003, while in detention for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during student-led protests against the ruling establishment.
   Iranian authorities initially said Kazemi died of a stroke, but a presidential committee later found that she died of a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage from a blow to the head.
   The court had only met three times in the trial of agent Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi, a counterespionage expert and the only person implicated by the judiciary in the killing. He pleaded innocent Saturday.
   No date was set for the verdict, but Ebadi protested the proceedings Sunday and refused to sign the indictment. She said the court needed to summon several top officials, including hard-line Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, to explain Kazemi's murder.
   "Whatever the verdict, it will be incorrect because the indictment was flawed ... we left the court in protest because our demands have been ignored," Ebadi said.
   The Canadian government has blamed Mortazavi for the death. Mortazavi's office has denied the allegations.
   The bill of indictment, which has cleared judiciary official Mohammad Bakhshi of any wrongdoing and implicated Ahmadi in the murder, was prepared by the Tehran Prosecutor's Office.
   Ahmadi's lawyer, Qasem Shabani, said he expected his client to be acquitted.
   "There is no reason for him to be convicted," Shabani told reporters outside the courthouse Sunday.
   On Saturday, Ebadi's team accused Bakhshi of inflicting the fatal blow to Kazemi, and accused the hard-line judiciary of illegally detaining her.
   Bakhshi has been cleared of any wrongdoing. But under Iranian law, lawyers can accuse someone already cleared of a crime.
   Mohammad Seifzadeh, who is on Ebadi's team, accused the court of a coverup.
   "It's clear that the person who inflicted the blow is free and the person who hasn't done so is standing trial and will later be acquitted and the whole crime will be covered up," Seifzadeh told reporters after the trial ended.
   Iranian-Canadian relations, strained by the slaying, further deteriorated after Iran blocked Canadian observers from attending the trial. When the Canadian ambassador was about to be recalled for the second time over the issue, Iran agreed to allow diplomats to attend on Saturday.
   However, Canadian and European diplomats and the media were denied access on Sunday.
   Clearly outraged, Canadian Ambassador Philip Mackinnon and other diplomats left the building after waiting for nearly two hours outside the court.
   Iranian officials defended the court's decision to keep diplomats and the media out.
   "Zahra Kazemi was Iranian, and Canada's insistence that that lady was Canadian does not change anything," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. He said the judge must decide whether to allow media access and that the government continues to oppose allowing a Canadian observer to attend the trial.
   Asefi insisted that ties with Canada would not be harmed by the case. "Zahra Kazemi was an Iranian citizen and this has nothing to do with Canada," he said.