Police said to raid Iran Nobel Laureate's office
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian police Sunday raided and closed the office of a watchdog group led by Iran's Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi ahead of a celebration to mark International Human Rights Day, a member of the group said.
Narges Mohammadi, deputy head of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, told Reuters that police provided no legal justification for their raid of the office.
"Dozens of policemen along with plainclothes security agents entered the office without showing a search warrant," Mohammadi said. "A policeman said he was not obliged to show a warrant because he was wearing a police uniform."
Police declined to comment on the report.
Mohammadi said the raid came hours ahead of the group's belated celebration of the 60th anniversary of Human Rights Day, which fell on December 10.
"Mrs Ebadi was not at the office when police raided the premises," Mohammadi said.
Ebadi, who won the 2003 Nobel peace prize, used a United Nations forum in Geneva Wednesday to condemn hardliners in power in some Muslim countries and rulers of the world's last communist states as abusers of human rights.
Ebadi, an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic's human rights record, said Muslim dictatorships used religion to underpin their own power.
The Iranian human rights advocate has repeatedly criticised Iran's human rights record, citing what she says was a rising number of political prisoners and the highest number of executions per capita in the world last year.
Over the years, Ebadi's advocacy of human rights has earned her a spell in jail and a stream of threatening letters and telephone calls.
Iran's government rejects accusations that it violates human rights and accuses its Western foes of hypocrisy and double standards.
(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Sami Aboudi)