Protesters attack Tehran home of Nobel winner Shirin Ebadi

Story Highlights

• Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi's office raided by Iranian authorities Monday
  
• Protesters attack her office, home in Tehran Thursday, accuse her of backing Israel
  
• Ebadi, a veteran human rights activist, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003
  
• Fellow rights activists, Nobel prize winners have expressed fears for her safety

From Shirzad Bozorgmehr

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- A group of demonstrators attacked the Tehran home and office of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi on Thursday, trampling a sign in the front yard, spray-painting slogans on her building and accusing her of supporting Israel, her office said.

Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her human rights work.

Police dispersed the group of protesters, who identified themselves as medical students, about a half-hour after the demonstrators arrived, she said.

According to a statement from Ebadi's Center for the Defenders of Human Rights, the protesters chanted, "Ebadi supports Israel's murders."

"Ironically, the chanting of the slogan comes shortly after the Center for the Defenders of Human Rights issued a statement condemning the violence in Gaza and demanding quick action by international organizations," it said in a news release.

Ebadi could not be reached for comment.

On Monday, government agents raided Ebadi's law office -- which is in the same building as her apartment -- seizing two computers and dozens of files and documents on her clients, who are mostly political activists, Ebadi told CNN Wednesday.

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The authorities said they were from the tax office, Ebadi said. Her offices were shut down last week after police raided her office as guests arrived for a belated celebration of the 60th anniversary of U.N. Human Rights Day.

That sparked condemnation by the European Union, which called on Iran "to respect their international human rights commitments and the right to peaceful assembly."

Ebadi, a former judge and veteran human rights activist, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

She has led several high-profile campaigns on behalf of women and children in Iran and successfully campaigned to reveal those responsible for a 1999 attack on Tehran University students that left several dead. She has been imprisoned by Iranian authorities on numerous occasions.

Other peace prize winners have launched a letter-writing campaign to the United Nations and to Iranian embassies around the world in an effort to raise concerns about her safety.

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Iran closes Shirin Ebadi's human rights centre

BBC World News

Iran's judiciary said Ms Ebadi's group did not have the required legal permits

Iranian police have raided and closed the office of a human rights group led by the Nobel laureate, Shirin Ebadi.

Judiciary officials said the centre was acting as an illegal political party, and had contacts with local and foreign organisations, local media reported.

The raid came shortly before the centre was to host a celebration for the 60th anniversary of Human Rights Day.

Ms Ebadi, who has repeatedly criticised Iran's human rights record, said it would not stop her supporters' work.

"We will meet again somewhere else and will continue to support the rights of activists and political prisoners," she told the Associated Press.

In a statement, the judiciary said it had ordered the closure of the Human Rights Defenders Centre in Tehran because it did not have the required legal permits, the Mehr news agency reported.

It had also been "promoting illegal activities such as issuing statements on different occasions, sending letters to domestic and foreign organisations, holding press conferences, meetings and conferences" which created an atmosphere "of media publicity against the establishment in recent years", the statement added.

Ms Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for work that included promoting the rights of women and children in Iran and worldwide.

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Veiled by force

Humiliating and discriminatory treatment of any kind, towards anyone, man, woman, black, Muslim, Asian or white, should always be denounced and reviled. I've been waiting for the hostage crisis to end before ranting about the treatment of Leading Seaman Faye Turney at the hands of the Iranian government. I was shocked but not surprised to see her stripped of her uniform and treated as a "woman" - i.e., obliged to wear a headscarf and "feminine" garments that covered her arms and legs - instead of what she was: a captured British seaman. In the end, the men were given "five-dollar suits" and she was costumed as what I can only describe as a homeless fashion victim. Fortunately, when the hostages returned to the "real world", they were all back in uniform. The fact that Turney was kept apart from the others and told that the men had been sent home, and she would never see her daughter again, just makes the entire situation all the more heinous. It's hard to think and write rationally when overcome with outrage, but I would like to point out one cold fact: women fighting in a war involving hardcore Islamic extremists are placed in special danger. Female soldiers are always exposed to more "up close and personal" violence than men (though men can, of course, be raped too). However, it is clear from the way the Taliban treated women in Afghanistan that the extremists' claim to "respect" women is completely hypocritical. Plainly, they see us as weaker, frailer, somehow "unclean" and unworthy of being treated as equals. Women have fought long and hard to wear the same uniform and receive the same treatment as men in the "Western" armed forces. Of course, this goal is still a distant dream, but not impossible. All of a sudden, by crossing an invisible border (or not, since it is much more likely that the Iranians staged an ambush in order to get hostages to trade for the members of the Republican Guard being held in Iraq), the one female, a serviceperson among her officers and peers, was obliged to follow precepts that are not of her faith - if she has one - and subjected to treatment that is alien to her culture and upbringing. If Muslim women in Britain are outraged because, in some circumstances, they are not allowed to wear the veil, I would like to see and express the same degree of fury at a non-Muslim being forced to wear one. A woman who is forced to wear any sort of garment - whether "modest" or "revealing" - is being objectified or, what is worse, made invisible. Turney's treatment was yet another example of the real-life reenactment of The Handmaid's Tale.
For more information, read the BBC article UK captive 'felt like a traitor'