Iran seizes rights lawyer's Nobel Peace medal

(November 28, 2009) Iranian authorities have confiscated Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi's medal, the human rights lawyer said, in a sign of the increasingly drastic steps Tehran is taking against any dissent. In Norway, where the peace prize is awarded, the government has said the confiscation of the gold medal was a shocking first in the history of the 108-year-old prize. Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts in promoting democracy. Acting on orders from Tehran's Revolutionary Court, authorities took the peace prize medal about three weeks ago from a safe-deposit box in Iran, Ebadi said in a phone interview from London. She has long faced harassment from Iranian authorities for her activities, including threats against her relatives and a raid on her office last year in which files were confiscated. The seizure of her prize is an expression of the Iranian government's harsh approach to anyone it considers an opponent, particularly since the massive street protests triggered by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June 12 re-election. They also seized her Legion of Honour by France and a ring awarded to her by a German association of journalists, she said. Authorities froze the bank accounts of her and her husband and demanded $410,000 in taxes that they claimed were owed on the $1.3 million she was awarded. Ebadi said, however, that such prizes are exempt from tax under Iranian law. She said the government also appears intent on trying to confiscate her home.