Iranian Is Acquitted in Slaying

A court acquitted the sole defendant in the killing of an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, the lawyer representing the victim’s mother said Saturday.

Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, who is the chief lawyer for the mother of slain photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, said the legal proceedings were flawed.

“I’m required to work until my last breath to make sure that justice is done to my client,” Ebadi said. She threatened to take the matter to international organizations if the Iranian judiciary fails to carry out justice.

“I’ll protest this verdict. If the appeals court and other legal stages fail to heed our objections, we will use all domestic and international facilities to meet the legal rights of my client,” Ebadi said.

Kazemi, a Canadian freelance journalist of Iranian origin, died in July 2003 while being held for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during student-led protests against the Islamic regime.

Iranian authorities initially said Kazemi died of a stroke, but a presidential committee later found that she died of a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage.

The agent charged with killing Kazemi, Mohammed Reza Aghdam Ahmadi, pleaded innocent July 17 and the trial was abruptly ended the next day.

Hard-liners were angered when the defense team led by Ebadi accused prison official Mohammed Bakhshi of inflicting the fatal blow to Kazemi and the conservative judiciary of illegally detaining her.

Ebadi, who leads a four-member legal team, accused the court of deliberately failing to carry out justice.

“If the court had summoned the people we named during the trial for explanation, it could have accurately identified the people who committed the murder,” she said.

Ebadi said the court also ruled that Kazemi’s “blood money” will be paid from public, or government, funds. Blood money is the compensation that an Islamic court orders a convicted attacker to pay the victim or the victim’s relatives. In Kazemi’s case, the money has to be paid from public funds because no killer has been identified.

The average compensation paid to relatives of a Muslim man killed is about $18,750. The payment is about half that if the victim was Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian or female, regardless of her religion.