Murdered journalist: Lawyers attack Iranian trial

Iran’s hard-line judiciary today abruptly concluded the trial of a secret agent charged with murdering an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, prompting lawyers for the victim’s mother to describe the proceedings as “unacceptable”.

It was not clear when a verdict would be issued in the case, which has strained Iranian-Canadian ties and led to finger-pointing between hard-liners and reformers within Iran’s ruling Islamic establishment.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who leads a four-member legal team representing Zahra Kazemi’s mother, said her lawyers refused to sign the bill of indictment and walked out of the courthouse in protest.

Earlier, Canadian and western diplomats and journalists were barred from attending the trial.

“This court is unacceptable. The indictment is flawed and incomplete. A verdict issued based on this hearing won’t be fair. We left the court in protest,” Ebadi told reporters outside the courthouse.

The court had only met three times in the trial of agent Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi, a counter-espionage expert and the only person implicated by the judiciary in what is called the “semi-premeditated murder” of Kazemi. He pleaded innocent Saturday.

Ahmadi’s lawyer, Qasem Shabani said he expected his client to be acquitted.

“There is no reason for him to be convicted,” Shabani told reporters outside the courthouse.

Kazemi, a Canadian freelance journalist of Iranian origin, died July 10, 2003, while in detention for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during student-led protests against the ruling establishment.

Iranian authorities initially said Kazemi died of a stroke. Later, a presidential committee found that she died of a fractured skull and brain haemorrhage from a blow to the head.

On Saturday, Ebadi’s team accused prison official Mohammad Bakhshi, not Ahmadi, of inflicting the fatal blow to Kazemi, and accused the hard-line judiciary of illegally detaining her.

Bakhshi has been cleared of any wrongdoing but under Iranian law, lawyers can accuse someone already cleared of a crime.

Mohammad Seifzadeh, part of Ebadi’s defence team, accused the court today of covering up facts surrounding Kazemi’s death.

“It’s clear that the person who inflicted the blow is free and the person who hasn’t done so is standing trial and will later be acquitted and the whole crime will be covered up,” Seifzadeh said.

Ebadi’s team had demanded that the court call several top officials, including hard-line Tehran Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, to explain Kazemi’s death.

“We have demanded witnesses … the indictment has to be completed in order to determine who the murderer or murderers are,” she said.

The Canadian government has blamed Mortazavi for the death, and reformists have accused him of trying to cover up facts surrounding it.

Judiciary officials on Sunday barred Canadian and European diplomats, as well as journalists representing foreign media, from the trial, although they had been allowed to attend the day before.

A clearly outraged Canadian Ambassador Philip Mackinnon and other diplomats left the building after waiting for more than one and a half hours outside the court.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said there was no reason to allow foreign diplomats and journalists to attend all court trials.

“Any such presence would not in any way add to the fairness or impartiality of any trial. … The decision to bar the press in a criminal proceeding is usual in most countries in order to prevent a prejudgment of the case,” he added.

Iran’s hard-line judiciary also ordered two pro-democracy publications to be shut down on Saturday. Sources at the newspapers said officials were apparently upset with an article one of them published earlier this week about Kazemi’s death.