TEHRAN, 13 June 2004 — Iran’s judiciary has barred Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi from representing the family of Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photographer who died in custody here, a spokesman for her group said yesterday.

Mohammad-Ali Dadkhah of the Human Rights Defense Circle said Ebadi’s name did not figure in the list of approved lawyers on a summons for the next hearing in the case, set for July 17, some nine months after a controversial first hearing.

“This means that the judiciary has refused that Shirin Ebadi can represent the mother of Zahra Kazemi as a lawyer,” he said.

Kazemi, 56, was arrested in June 2003 for taking photographs outside Tehran’s Evin prison. She died in hospital on July 10, 2003 from a brain hemorrhage caused by a blow to the head.

Ebadi, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her work on women’s and children’s rights, announced last November that she had agreed to represent Kazemi’s family in the trial of an intelligence agent charged with her killing.

A small and soft-spoken 56-year-old jurist, she emerged as one of Iran’s leading pro-reform activists spearheading a drive for rights for women and children as well as representing political dissidents.

Intelligence Ministry agent Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi, 42, has been charged with “participation in a semi-intentional murder”, in a trial that has sparked a feud between the courts and the intelligence service.

When the accused allegedly began questioning Kazemi, the photographer was in good health, but following an interrogation she was admitted to hospital, the prosecution has alleged.

The intelligence service argues that Kazemi was fatally hurt while in the hands of the judiciary.

The case, which caused an international uproar, has served to focus more attention on Iran’s human rights record and has caused relations between Iran and Canada to nose-dive.

The affair also descended into a tit-for-tat spat, when Iran responded to Canadian complaints by raising the issue of the killing of an Iranian-Canadian teenager by a policeman in British Columbia in July last year.

On Thursday, Iran officially protested to Canada after authorities in British Columbia concluded the policeman acted in self-defense.

Iran’s director for consular affairs, Morteza Javedan, expressed “deep concern over the fact the case was handled with total opacity, that the family’s lawyer was not able to sit in the meeting where the prosecutor’s report was examined and was not able to learn about the case.”

Last year, Iran’s judiciary also slammed Canada’s legal system as the “backward and racist” after the United Nations passed an Ottawa resolution condemning human rights in the Islamic republic.