Shirin Ebadi Nobel Confiscated: Iran Confiscates Shirin Ebadi Nobel Laureate Medal

Tehran's Revolutionary Court ordered Nobel Laureate, Shirin Ebadi's 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, be removed from a safety deposit box in Iran, along with her Legion of Honor medal and a ring awarded to her by German journalists. See a video below.

Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi's, a human rights lawyer, who has been out of Iran since June 2009, said her bank accounts were frozen and the government was demanding $410,000 in taxes on the Nobel prize.

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. "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."

Ebadi left Iran one day before the June elections to attend a conference in Spain. She has been an outspoken opponent of the June elections, saying that Achmadinejad stole the election through massive fraud.

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

Ebadi has been charged with "conspiring against the State," and her apartment has been "seized." Her husband, Javad Tavassolian and her brother and sister are still in Iran and have threatened "many time." Her husband was "severely beaten" earlier this Fall.

Of all the reports I have read on Shirin Ebadi, this one is of particular interest. Ebadi says that Britain is "appeasing Iran:"

Shirin Ebadi, the human rights lawyer, said that her worst fears were confirmed when she saw the British Ambassador at President Ahmadinejad’s inauguration.

“That’s when I felt that human rights were being neglected,” she told The Times. “I’m very sorry to say the West cares more about its own security than human rights. I think they’re wrong . . . Undemocratic countries are more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. It’s undemocratic countries that jeopardise international peace.”

Spokesmen for the Nobel Commission said in the history of the Peace Prize, Ebadi's medal is the first to be "confiscated by national authorities." In the video below, you'll see and hear Ebadi talking about human rights in Iran.



Shirin Ebadi (video)