Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Iran’s hardline judiciary admitted on Tuesday that it had made an administrative error by summoning Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi to a national security court, and said there was no danger she would be arrested.
It, however, dismissed Ebadi’s complaint over the use of solitary confinement here, saying such cells no longer existed and had been replaced by ‘‘comfortable suites’’.
‘‘There is no such thing as solitary confinement in Iran,’’ judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimi-Rad said the day after Ebadi made a public demand for the practice to stop.
‘‘There are some suites for temporary detention or for cases where the judge thinks that the accused has to be kept separately for a short term,’’ he stressed. On the summons issued to Ebadi, the spokesman said, ‘‘The prosecutor reviewed the case when he learned it concerned Ebadi, and found some mistakes had been made.’’
He explained that the clerk who wrote the summons ‘‘was not experienced enough’’, and had failed to state the reason for the summons and had also mistakenly called Ebadi to a revolutionary court — a tribunal that handles political or national security crimes. The case, he explained, concerned a private complaint of ‘‘insult’’. The spokesman also stressed this was also ‘‘pardonable’’. — PTI
