Iranian appeals court acquits human rights lawyer

Tuesday, May 29, 2007- By Agence France Presse (AFP)

TEHRAN: A prominent Iranian human rights lawyer who works alongside Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi said Monday he has been acquitted on appeal of espionage-related charges after spending seven months in jail. Abdolfattah Soltani was given a five-year sentence in March last year for leaking documents in a case related to Iran's controversial nuclear program and for spreading propaganda against the regime. "The court of appeal of Tehran has rejected all the accusations, saying that there was no proof against me," Soltani said, according to the semi-official ILNA news agency. Soltani had already been released on bail in March before the appeals court overturned the verdict. The lawyer, a member of Ebadi's Defenders of Human Rights Center, was arrested in July 2005 and eventually spent 219 days behind bars before being allowed to go home in March 2007 after paying a bail of $109,000. The lawyer was involved in some of Iran's most high-profile rights cases, representing prominent dissident Akbar Ganji and the family of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who was killed while in custody in 2003. - AFP