IRAN: Iran Seizes Nobel Winner Shirin Ebadi's Medal

Iran has confiscated the Nobel peace medal and diploma of Shirin Ebadi, the human rights lawyer who is one of the hardline regime's most outspoken critics. Her bank account has also been frozen on the pretext that she owes almost £250,000 in tax.

The seizure of the award, unprecedented in its 108-year history, caused outrage in Oslo, where the Nobel Peace Committee is based. The Norwegian Government summoned the Iranian envoy to protest, and the committee said that it would make a formal complaint.

“Such an act leaves us feeling shock and disbelief,” said Jonas Gahr Støre, the Norwegian Foreign Minister.

Geir Lundestad, secretary of the committee, said that Iran's action was unacceptable. “A laureate has never been treated like that. Even political dissidents such as [Andrei] Sakharov and [Lech] Walesa were better treated in their countries,” he added, referring to the Russian dissident and the Polish trade union leader, both of whom won the prize while living in the Soviet bloc.

In 2003 Dr Ebadi became the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the peace prize, which was awarded for her campaign for democracy and human rights. She was abroad during President Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in June and has spent the past five months travelling the world to draw attention to the regime's alleged electoral fraud and suppression of the opposition. “I am effectively in exile,” she said recently.

She revealed the loss of her Nobel medal in an interview on Radio Farda, a US-backed Persian language station. She said that the regime had frozen her bank accounts and pension, as well as those of her husband, who is still in Tehran. She continued: “Even my Nobel and Légion d'honneur medals, my Freedom of Speech ring and other prizes, which were in my husband's safe, have been confiscated.”

Norwegian officials said that the medal had been taken from a bank deposit box.

Dr Ebadi, 62, told another interviewer: “They say I owe them $410,000 in back taxes because of the Nobel. It's a complete lie, given that the Iranian fiscal law says that prizes are excluded.” The prize money was $1.4 million.

She said that she was trying to recover her property through legal means, but “so far, no judge has dared to review our complaint”.

Dr Ebadi's lawyer in Tehran, Nasrin Sotoudeh, said that the medal was seized on the order of a judge at the Tehran Revolutionary Court.

The confiscation of Dr Ebadi's prizes is only part of the regime's campaign to silence her. It has closed her Centre for the Defence of Human Rights in Tehran and locked up three of her colleagues. She has been denounced in the state-controlled media and charged in absentia with conspiring against the State. Her husband was badly beaten this autumn and her apartment is said to have been seized.

In an interview with The Times in September Dr Ebadi said that the Intelligence Ministry had repeatedly interrogated her husband and brother, ordered them to shut her up and told them that it could track her down anywhere in the world. “In effect they have threatened me with death,” she said.

She insisted that she would continue to denounce the regime's brutality — the shooting of innocent protesters, imprisonment, beating and torture of opponents — and the use of show trials and forced confessions. “Naturally the Iranian Government doesn't want the world to know what's happening in Iran, so it's my duty to inform as many people as possible.”

Dr Ebadi has been lobbying world leaders, urging them not to ignore Iran's human rights abuses in their desire to engage the regime over its nuclear programme.

When The Times asked where she was based, she replied: “Airports around the world.” She said that she planned to return to Iran soon despite the danger of being arrested at the airport. If not imprisoned, she would fight for justice for the families of those killed after the election. She said that those who had contacted her included the mother of Neda Soltan, the student who was shot dead during a demonstration and became a symbol of the opposition.

In a statement yesterday the Norwegian Foreign Ministry said that it had protested not just about the confiscation of Dr Ebadi's Nobel medal, but also about the prolonged harassment of her and her husband. “The persecution of Dr Ebadi and her family show that freedom of expression is under great pressure in Iran,” Mr Støre said.

“We made it clear that Norway will continue to engage in international efforts to protect human rights defenders and will follow the situation in Iran closely.”