AP News, November 27th, 2007
Iran's Supreme Court ordered a new investigation Tuesday into the case of an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist whose death in a notorious Tehran prison severely strained relations with Canada.
Zahra Kazemi was arrested in July 2003 while taking photographs outside Evin prison during student-led protests against the ruling theocracy. She taken into custody, jailed at Evin and died a few days later. Iranian authorities initially said she had suffered a stroke.
A committee appointed by then-President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, found that Kazemi, 54, died of a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage caused by a "physical attack." Prosecutors filed charges against a secret agent who interrogated Kazemi while she was in custody.
The more conservative judiciary rejected the presidential finding, saying that Kazemi had died in an accidental fall when her blood pressure dropped during a hunger strike.
A former Iranian army doctor has said he examined Kazemi and observed horrific injuries that could only have been caused by torture and rape. The doctor later received political asylum in Canada.
Lawyers representing Kazemi's relatives have repeatedly said they did not believe the secret agent was guilty, accusing prison official Mohammad Bakhshi of inflicting the fatal blow to Kazemi and the judiciary of illegally detaining her.
Kazemi was not formally charged with a crime but Iran does not allow photographs of its prisons and is especially sensitive about Evin, where human rights groups have accused authorities of abusing political prisoners — a charge the government denies.
A court acquitted the Iranian secret agent in 2004 and an appeals court upheld that ruling a year later. The judiciary has also cleared Bakhshi of any wrongdoing.
The Canadian government has blamed Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi for Kazemi's death. Iranian reformists accused Mortazavi of trying to stage a cover-up because he was the one who reported that Kazemi died of a stroke. No charges have been filed against Mortazavi in the case.
Canada recalled its ambassador in 2003 to protest Iran's handling of the case but has since sent an ambassador back to Tehran.
The case was appealed this year to Iran's Supreme Court. Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters Tuesday that the Supreme Court had decided that the court that first ruled in Kazemi's death did not have jurisdiction over it.
"Judges at the Supreme Court have objected to the court investigating the case, saying it was not competent to investigate the case," Jamshidi said.
Kazemi's son, Stephan Hachemi, said from Canada that the new investigation was "just a diversion" and that "nothing is going to come out of Iran, that's for sure."
"There is no justice there. It's not something we can call a justice system. Those responsible for this crime are the government, the whole government of Iran," Hachemi said from Montreal. "They are a bunch of criminals from A to Z ... The criminals themselves run the justice system there."
Still, Iranian lawyers for Kazemi's family said they were hopeful a fresh investigation could lead to new charges in the case.
"This is a decision is in the right direction. Now, we want a full, free and fair reinvestigation into the deliberate murder of Kazemi," Mohammad Seifzadeh, a lawyer representing Kazemi's mother, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Seifzadeh said his team will exhaust all legal options in Iran and will take the matter to international human rights organizations if justice is not carried out.
"We will pursue our complaint to the end. The judiciary has to respond to our demand and prosecute the one who committed this crime and works in the judiciary," he said.
Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, the chief lawyer for the victim's mother, has also in the past rejected the court's rulings as flawed and threatened to take the matter to international organizations if other legal stages failed to carry out justice.
Kazemi's family has filed a civil claim in Quebec against the government of Iran seeking damages for her alleged torture and death, said John Terry, the family's Canadian lawyer.
Terry speculated that the Iranian justice system may be reacting to that civil lawsuit or to some Iranian lawyers' criticism of the case's handling.
"I think they want to take some weight off this suit. They just want to give themselves a good image," Hachemi said.
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Associated Press Writer Rob Gillies contributed to this report from Toronto.
