TEHRAN, 17 November 2005 — Iran’s judiciary has called for a new probe into the murder in custody of Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi after acquitting an intelligence agent initially accused of the crime, the agent’s lawyer said yesterday.
Reading from a long-awaited appeals court verdict on the controversial case, Ghasem Shabani told reporters the judiciary had concluded there had been “shortcomings in the investigation” into the July 2003 death.
“My client has been cleared of quasi-intentional murder,” Shabani of his client, Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi, who had long maintained he was a scapegoat and who was acquitted by a lower court last year.
But the importance of the new appeals court verdict was that it reversed alleged efforts to completely close the affair.
“The witnesses have not been rightly interrogated and because of the shortcomings in the investigation, the other people accused must be examined. This verdict orders that the case be sent back to the General and Revolutionary Court,” Shabani said in his summary of the verdict.
Kazemi, who was 54, died after being arrested for photographing a demonstration outside a Tehran prison. Family lawyers — led by Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi — have been trying to bring to justice a judiciary official they say is the real killer.
“It is a positive and useful decision to demand for the courts to look into the case again,” said Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, one of the team representing Kazemi’s enraged family.
“We hope the judiciary... will again examine this case. They are obliged to do so.”
Ebadi’s team had also backed the agent’s plea of innocence, but complained that their efforts to look into other suspects had been blocked and claimed that the judiciary was engaged in a cover-up.
