Iran confiscates rights lawyer's Nobel Peace medal

Iranian authorities have confiscated Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi's medal, the human rights lawyer said, in a sign of the increasingly drastic steps Tehran is taking against any dissent.

In Norway, where the peace prize is awarded, the government said Thursday the confiscation of the gold medal was a shocking first in the history of the 108-year-old prize.

Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts in promoting democracy. She has long faced harassment from Iranian authorities for her activities - including threats against her relatives and a raid on her office last year in which files were confiscated.

Tehran on Friday denied having confiscated the medal, the Mehr news agency reported.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that there has been no confiscation and linked the issue to non-payment of taxes by Ebadi.

"We really wonder about this stance by Norwegian officials without thorough study of the case," the spokesman said.

Mehmanparast called on Norway to respect global tax laws but did not make clear what exactly was confiscated from Ebadi due to non-payment of her taxes.

The seizure of her prize is an expression of the Iranian government's harsh approach to anyone it considers an opponent - particularly since the massive street protests triggered by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June 12 re-election.

Acting on orders from Tehran's Revolutionary Court, authorities took the peace prize medal about three weeks ago from a safe-deposit box in Iran, Ebadi said in a phone interview from London. They also seized her Legion of Honor and a ring awarded to her by a German association of journalists, she said.

Authorities froze her bank accounts, as well as her husband's, and demanded $410,000 in taxes that they claimed were owed on the $1.3 million she was awarded. Ebadi said, however, that such prizes are exempt from tax under Iranian law. She said the government also appears intent on trying to confiscate her home.

Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to be awarded the peace prize and the first female judge in Iran, said she would not be intimidated and that her absence from the country since June did not mean she felt exiled.

"Nobody is able to send me to exile from my home country," she said Thursday. "I have received many threatening messages. ... They said they would detain me if I returned, or that they would make the environment unsafe for me wherever I am."

"But my activities are legal and nobody can ban me from my legal activities," she added.

Ebadi has criticized the Iranian government's crackdown on demonstrations by those claiming the June vote was stolen from a pro-reform candidate through massive fraud.

Ebadi left the country a day before the vote to attend a conference in Spain and has not returned since. In the days after the vote, she urged the international community to reject the outcome and called for a new election monitored by the United Nations.

During the past months, hundreds of pro-reform activists have been arrested, and a mass trial has sentenced dozens to prison terms. Authorities also went after Ebadi's human rights center in Iran.

"After the election all my colleagues in the center were either detained or banned from traveling abroad," Ebadi said.

Calls to Iranian judiciary officials were not returned Thursday.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere called the move shocking and said it was the first time a Nobel Peace Prize has been confiscated by national authorities.

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry summoned Iran's charge d'affaires in Norway on Wednesday to protest the confiscation, spokeswoman Ragnhild Imerslund said.

The Foreign Ministry also expressed grave concern about Ebadi's husband, who it said was arrested in Tehran and severely beaten earlier this fall, after which his pension and bank account were frozen.

Ebadi said her husband, Javad Tavassolian, and her brother and sister have been threatened many times by authorities pushing them to persuade her to end her human rights campaigning.

Ebadi has represented opponents of Iran's regime before but not in the mass trial that started in August of more than 100 prominent pro-reform figures and activists. They are accused of plotting to overthrow the cleric-led regime during the post-election turmoil.

The Iranian Embassy in Norway refrained from giving a comment.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee's permanent secretary, Geir Lundestad, said the move was unheard of and unacceptable. He told The Associated Press that the committee was planning to send a letter of protest to Iranian authorities before the end of the week.

Ebadi said she planned to return to Iran when the time is right.

"I will return whenever it is useful for my country," she said. "Right now I am busy with my activities against violations of human rights in Iran and my international jobs."

	Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi.
	Photo by: (Reuters)