Iranian Nobel Laureate Urges Dissident's Release

Akbar Ganji during a hunger strike in July (official site) 5 November 2005 -- Lawyers for Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji today called for his immediate release.

The lawyers, who included Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, said Ganji was being beaten in prison and called his detention illegal.

In a letter to the head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, the group of lawyers called for Ganji's immediate release.

Ganji was sentenced to six years in jail in 2001 after he wrote articles implicating several government officials in a series of murders of opposition figures.

(AFP)