Ordered to pay 500 million Tomans (about USD 500,000) in income tax, Iran’s only Nobel laurete Shirin Ebadi still hopes that the appellate court will reverse the ruling on the basis of her lawyer’s legal arguments. In an interview with Rooz, Ebadi discusses the freezing of her and her husband’s assets, her activities abroad in recent months and her international influence.

Rooz: Mrs. Ebadi; you have been ordered to pay 500 million Tomans in taxes. You previously had said that according to law awards are not taxable, but apparently the Iranian government claims that, aside from the Nobel award, you have not paid other taxes as well. Can you please talk about this issue.

Shirin Ebadi (Ebadi): About the tax case, I have to say that because they have not found any issues during my 45 years of legal and civil practice in Iran, they are sticking to the tax issue. According to Iranian laws, awards are exempt from taxation. On the…

Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi [has again] condemned the arrest and imprisonment of political and social activists and warned that the continuation of these policies will “further spread the crisis within the Islamic Republic.”

Mehdi Karroubi visited the family of imprisoned journalist and human rights activists Emadeddin Baghi. According to Saham News, Karroubi stated that Emaddedin Baghi, Ahamd Zeidabadi, Issa Saharkhiz, Feizollah Arabsorkhi, and all other post-election detainees should be released by the Islamic Republic.

Baghi has been imprisoned since December 2009, following the Ashura protests. His wife Fatemeh Kamali has reported that her husband’s health is suffering, and although prison authorities are fully aware of his grave physical condition in prison, they have made no attempt to rectify the situation.

Thousands of people were arrested during the post-election protests and many remain in prison. Large…

After months of dilly-dallying, the Chinese government has finally decided to abandon its policy of "negotiations only" with regards to the Iranian nuclear program.

According to Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, China has now officially agreed to enter talks with Western powers about a new UN resolution against Iran, which aims to introduce new sanctions.

True, the Chinese have said they are willing to talk. They have not said that they are going to agree to new sanctions, yet. Nevertheless, this is still a step forward for the EU and the U.S., as China was not willing to even discuss sanctions until very recently.

The fact that Beijing has agreed to discuss these steps is bad news for Tehran. This is why Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dispatched the top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, to hold talks with the Chinese government. His hope is that it is not too late, and that he can find a way to persuade the Chinese…

We are back at the grind and vacation is over, but not without its share of adventure. We just cannot get away from that in Iran, no matter how hard we try, be it a simple trip to the passport office, or one for vacation.

I went up to a remote village in Gilan for a few days to relax and cut myself off from everything, especially the news. I had no television or radio, no internet, and barely answered my phone. Strangely, and with the exception of one issue of Iran, no newspapers were published during the holidays this year either, so I didn’t have the option of getting one at the nearby town even if I wanted to. If I remember correctly, papers normally took a five day break for the holidays which I always thought it to be a bit ridiculous anyway, but I guess this year they were as tired as I was. They started appearing at the newsstands today, the fourteenth.

The only bit of news I received was from a friend. He called to let me know that…

Arash Hejazi is an Iranian author and publisher, now living in the UK.
He was standing next to Neda Agha Soltan on the day she was shot during the Iranian protests in June 2009.
He tried to save her, and the video of that moment and Neda’s last minute of life flashed across the internet worldwide.
It made Neda the poster child for the opposition Green Movement. And it made Arash Hejazi a target for the Iranian regime.
Since then there have been demonstrations in Tehran calling for his extradition from the UK, and he says, his Tehran publishing house is in the process of being shut down.
He talks to Sarah Montague about what happened that day and how it has changed his life.

You can watch the full interview on Tuesday 6th April 2010 on BBC World News at 03:30, 08:30, 15:30, 20:30 GMT.

A special prosecutorial branch will be established shortly to deal with Iranians residing abroad, said minister of justice.
During a meeting of the High Council for Coordination of Iranian Expats, minister of justice Morteza Bakhtiari said necessary steps have been taken to establish a special prosecutorial branch that will deal with Iranian living outside the country.
Bakhtiari did not specify the reasons for establishing the special branch or its mandate but said, “The heads of Tehran justice department and the Revolutionary Court have announced their readiness to implement the plan”.
With Tehran Prosecutor’s efforts, 2 branches of first and appeals courts and several branches of magistrate courts will be assigned to deal with expats affairs. Answering to a question about political refugees, Bakhtiari said, “Intelligence and judicial authorities have representatives in this Council and will take appropriate decisions about political…

The head of Iran’s military court has revealed that investigation is under way into the case of the murdered doctor working at the Kahrizak detention centre.
According to Iran’s Labour News Agency (ILNA), when asked whether the case of the murdered doctor was being investigated with all of the accused, Mohammad Kazem Bahrami said that the case was being investigated independently from the case of those accused in the Kahrizak prison abuse scandal.
Ramin Pourandarjani who worked as a doctor at the Kahrizak detention centre died under mysterious circumstances in November 2009.
One of his patients at the prison had been Mohsen Rouholamini who died as a result of torture and abuse at Kahrizak.