By Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times
TEHRAN - Iranian authorities imprisoned one of the nation's most prominent human-rights activists yesterday after he appeared at a court appointment, his lawyer said.
Emadeddin Baghi, a writer who has campaigned vigorously against the death penalty in Iran, was taken into custody during a hearing in Tehran's Revolutionary Court, which tries those charged with political crimes.
Baghi's relatives said the court imposed a previously suspended one-year sentence on state security charges and denied bail. His lawyers said they were barred from the courtroom.
"We were not allowed . . . to be present during the investigation," said Saleh Nikbakht, one of Baghi's two lawyers.
Nikbakht said Baghi had told him he had been accused of revealing classified information. It was not immediately clear where the dissident was being held.
Authorities were angered recently by his outspoken opposition to the death penalty for Iranians of Arab descent convicted for taking part in a series of bombings in the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan.
Baghi opposes capital punishment in all cases.
He is also being accused of insulting Iran's leaders, according to the Iranian Students' News Association .
Baghi was born to a religious family in the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala in 1962. A former Islamic seminary student, he supported Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
He turned against the regime in the 1980s, writing books critical of the clerical establishment. He has written more than 20, most of them banned in his homeland. He was convicted on charges of apostasy and endangering state security in 2000 and spent nearly three years in prison.
As soon as Baghi got out, he founded the Center for the Defense of Prisoners' Rights, which advocates for the abolition of the death penalty. Several years ago, authorities handed him the one-year suspended sentence, which had been hanging over his head since.
In 2004, he was granted the $50,000 Civil Courage Prize, an international award inspired by Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. However, Baghi was barred by Iranian authorities from leaving the country to collect the award.
His wife, activist and writer Fatemeh Kamali, tried to post bail for her husband yesterday, but the bid was refused by the court, Nikbakht said.
the boston globe
Monday, October 15, 2007
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