Several hundred Tehran University students gathered Tuesday to welcome two leading pro-reform lawyers who were recently released after a month of detention by the conservative-dominated judiciary.
Mohsen Rahami and Shirin Ebadi were set free on bond Saturday after nearly four weeks in detention on charges they made videocassettes that implicated top fundamentalist government leaders in terrorist activities.
Assembled at the university's theater hall, students gave flowers to Rahami and Ebadi, who thanked them for their "valued, conscientious support" of the country's reformist movement.
Rahami denounced the conditions surrounding his arrest and detention, but both lawyers declined to give any details on the closed-door hearing Wednesday at Tehran's public court.
Ebadi and Rahami were joined at the ceremony by their attorneys and family members, along with prominent pro-reform Islamic thinker Mohsen Kadivar, who was recently released from Tehran's Evin Prison after serving an 18-month prison term for challenging Iran's system of theocracy.
Rahami was the lawyer for former interior minister Abdollah Nuri, a leading reformist who was jailed last year on charges of "anti-Islamic propaganda."
He also represented students in the recent trial of police accused of exceeding their authority in a raid on a student dormitory.
Ebadi, a frequent participant in meetings abroad on the condition of women in Iran, was the lawyer for the children of Daryush and Parvaneh Faruhar, two secular opponents of the government who were murdered in November 1998. Government intelligence agents were implicated in the killing.
The two lawyers are being tried along with six other people for making the videocassettes, including Farshad Ebrahimi, a fundamentalist militant who was allegedly featured on the tapes and who admitted making them at Rahami and Ebadi's urging - TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
