Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi is to defend a US-Iranian scholar awaiting trial in Teheran on national security charges, a lawyer from Ebadi’s human rights group told ISNA news agency on Wednesday.
Ebadi and two other lawyers from her Human Rights Defenders Centre agreed to represent Haleh Esfandiari following a request from the detainee’s mother, said Mohammad Seifzadeh, one of the lawyers concerned.
“In a letter this morning to the case inspector we asked to have a meeting with the defendant,” he was quoted as saying.
Esfandiari works for the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and has been held in Teheran’s Evin prison since May 8 after being prevented from leaving the country for several months.
Iranian officials confirmed on Tuesday that Esfandiari was being held by the country’s intelligence service for “acting against national security.”
Iran does not recognise dual nationality and the authorities in Teheran have emphasised that she will be treated as an Iranian.
Relatives of Esfandiari, who has lived in the United States for more than 25 years, said she had been prevented from leaving Iran since December after returning to visit her ailing mother.
Her passport was confiscated and she was subjected to interrogations by the intelligence service before being arrested last week.
An Iranian hardline paper has accused Esfandiari of being an “Israeli intelligence service agent” and seeking to foment revolution in Iran.
Esfandiari’s arrest came after the authorities confiscated the passport of another dual US-Iranian national, Parnaz Azima, a journalist working for the US-government funded radio station, Radio Farda.
