Iranian human rights lawyer given 9-year jail term

Jul 4, 2011, 15:09 GMT

Tehran - A prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and close aide to 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi has been sentenced by a Tehran court to a nine-year jail term, ISNA news agency reported Monday.

The charges against Mohammad-Ali Dadkhah included propaganda against the establishment and efforts to topple the country's Islamic system, ISNA said.

The co-founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center has also been prohibited for 10 years from working as attorney and concurrently from pursuing any academic activities.

The lawyer was also obliged to pay the equivalent of 300 dollars for having a satellite TV receiver in his apartment.

Dadkhah himself confirmed the court ruling and said he would demand an appeal court, ISNA said.

'I have been lawyer for over 30 years and the verdict against me has no comparison at all with any legal norms,' he told opposition websites.

He was reportedly arrested two years ago for having protested against the alleged fraud in the 2009 presidential election which led to the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Like Ebadi, Dadkhah was lawyer to a number of dissidents and people from religious minorities in the last three decades.

The constant protests by Ebadi and Dadkhah against human rights violation in Iran have made them an irritant to the establishment.

Ebadi herself fled the country in 2009 and has lived since then abroad.