IRAN: Human-rights lawyer finds himself a target, once again
Los Angeles Times / Borzou Daragahi
20-Aug-2009 (one comment)

Mohammed Dadkhah never organized political rallies or delivered soaring speeches.

He's a lawyer, the rare and daring kind of attorney who represents political activists, dissidents and religious minorities in Iran accused of crimes against the state. 

He was already locked in prison once, back in 2003, in an apparent attempt to prevent him from speaking up for those accused of political wrongs.

Now he is in jail again, locked up in Evin Prison, the same one where most of his clients have spent time.

According to his colleagues, Dadkhah has been under heavy pressure to publicly confess to being in involved in a nefarious plot against the Islamic Republic

Specifically, his interrogators wanted him to betray the the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, the small nonprofit organization he runs with Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, and to state that Ebadi was a traitor.

According to fellow lawyers who got a chance to meet with him, he was severely abused during the first days of his imprisonment in solitary confinement in early July. 

For two days, he was deprived of food. Then he was blindfolded and thrown d... >>>

Paymaneh Amiri

Iranian human rights leader tortured at Evin

by Paymaneh Amiri on Thu Aug 20, 2009 07:01 AM PDT

Mohammad Ali Dadkhah and his colleagues have been the only hope many political prisoners have had in the past.  When "hope" itself is put in solitary confinement and tortured, there isn't much left to say.


Balatarin
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