TEHRAN, 18 July 2004 — Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi yesterday called on a Tehran court to summon several high-ranking Iranian officials to testify in the controversial murder case of Iranian- Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi.
As attorney for the Zahra family, Ebadi insisted that intelligence chief Ali Yunessi, Vice President Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, Culture Minister Masjed Jamei, prosecutor general Saaid Mortazavi and two former MPs be summoned to testify before the court, the students’ news agency ISNA reported.
Ebadi, a leading lawyer in Iran, further called on staff members of the Baqiatollah Azam hospital in Tehran who had seen Zahra before her death to testify to the court as well. Ebadi and her three-man legal team accused Mohammad Bakhshi, an official of the Evin prison in Tehran, of hitting Zahra in the face and probably causing her death.
Bakhshi had been interrogated by the judiciary but was released due to insufficient evidence. Zahra’s legal team questioned the interrogations made so far and called on renewed investigations, especially further questioning of those witnesses who refrained from repeating their testimonies before the court, ISNA reported. Ebadi and her legal team said that Zahra was definitely hit and therefore the charges should be fully-deliberate rather than semi- deliberate murder.
In a tense resumption of the controversial trial, lawyers led by Ebadi told the court prosecutors had overlooked key elements of the case. They quoted witnesses as saying Zahra was hit on the head by a senior judicial representative at the jail immediately after her arrest.
“After being struck, she fell and after that she could not walk,” the court was told. The justice official in the prison who could be implicated was identified as Mohammad Bakhshi.
“Why do these elements not figure in the case?” asked one of the family lawyers, Mohammad Seifzadeh. The lawyers also backed the innocent plea of the intelligence agent on trial for “semi-intentional murder”, 42-year-old Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi. But the prosecution’s representative, Jafar Reshadati, said this hypothesis was “medically impossible” given that the fatal blow apparently occurred several days later.
In her comments to the judge, Ebadi insisted it was a case of “premeditated murder” and demanded the trial be moved to a provincial criminal tribunal that is made up of three to five judges and which usually deals with more serious cases.
Also present in the court were diplomats from Canada, and the Netherlands as rotatory head of the European Union.
The Zahra case is not only filled with ambiguities over the real culprit but also overshadowed by a political crisis between Tehran and Ottawa following Canada’s withdrawal of its ambassador last Wednesday after Iran rejected his demand to dispatch three Canadian observers to the court session.
Zahra, 54, was arrested in June last year while taking pictures of the notorious Evin prison in northern Tehran where she was also detained. She died a few days later.
The Iranian government first said the cause of death was a stroke but a further investigation ordered by President Mohammad Khatami and a second autopsy by the health minister found that she died of a brain hemorrhage allegedly caused by a severe beating during interrogation.
