Hard-liners prevented Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi from making a speech at a women’s university in Tehran today.

IRANIAN Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi called yesterday for the immediate release of jailed dissidents in the Islamic Republic and insisted that human rights were not incompatible with Islam.

I AM originally from Iran but have been living in Cork for the past 20 years. However, I am not a Muslim but a Baha’i and I came out of Iran just two months before the revolution in 1979.

Activists and world leaders have hailed the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi as a boost for democracy and equal rights in the Middle East.

IRANIAN writer Shirin Ebadi, a female human rights and democracy activist, was awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday.

IRAQ’S US-led government awarded licenses yesterday for firms to set up mobile phone networks, rebuffing calls by some American lawmakers to use US-backed technology to restore shattered communications.