An international reputation as a human rights defender was no defence for Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, when the Iranian regime went after her.
On the pretext of a tax inquiry, the authorities seized her home, the office of her campaigning organisation and even the 2003 medal she earned as the first female Peace Prize winner from the Islamic world. Officials froze her assets and confiscated the bank security deposit box where she stored her medal for safe keeping.
Her sister was briefly jailed and her husband blackmailed into a televised denunciation of her work before she got the medal back. The regime still has her assets in a concerted effort to blunt her campaigning zeal and intimidate her into silence.
It has not worked. Twenty years after she was held in solitary confinement and a decade after she went into exile in the UK, Ms Ebadi, now 71, is fighting a new battle on behalf of a colleague refused hospital treatment while in jail for campaigning against the death penalty.
"After 2009, I couldn't come back to my country – not because I'm afraid of being sent to prison as I know I can tolerate this – but I should be somewhere where I can be more useful for my goal and my country," said the former judge to The National.
Narges Mohammadi, 46, the deputy director of Ms Ebadi’s group, the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, went on hunger strike on Monday with her cellmate Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national.
Both women complain that officials at Evin prison have refused them hospital treatment for a series of serious complaints. Ms Mohammadi is serving 16 years in jail for spreading propaganda as part of her campaigning work.
“She’s very brave and very clever,” said Ms Ebadi. “She believes she must live in in Iran because she can be more effective for human rights.”
It has come at significant personal cost. Ms Mohammadi’s husband – a journalist who has spent more than 14 years in prison for his outspoken comments about the regime - and their children, 12-year-old twins, are living in exile in France.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe is one of 37 dual nationals in detention in Iran, according to figures compiled by Ms Ebadi’s charity, though she believes the number could be considerably higher.
Many families of those detained have remained quiet on the advice of governments amid diplomatic efforts to free them. But Ms Ebadi believes that the best defence of those detained is by raising their cases within international bodies and the media to hold Tehran responsible for any ill treatment.
“It’s very good that all the families are starting to tell their stories even though some are scared,” she said. “Public opinion is very important for the governments.”
She cited her own experience of spending 25 days in solitary confinement for her involvement in efforts to bring to justice security forces who killed a university student protesting about the closure of a newspaper in July 1999.
Ms Ebadi was jailed for 15 months after she unsuccessfully sought to highlight the evidence of a disaffected member of the security services. “There was no bed, no chair, no table, only a carpet and one blanket,” she said. “It’s very difficult to sleep without a pillow.
“There’s one light and it’s always on. There are no windows to the outside world and you’re isolated. Sometimes you cannot understand the time or whether it’s day or night. Psychologists say it’s like a white torture.”
She attributes her own release to an international outcry and her sentence was reduced on appeal. Four years later, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her “efforts for democracy and human rights” often working for free for victims of the regime.
Ms Ebadi became the first woman in the history of the Iranian judicial system to serve as a judge at the age of 22. She initially supported the 1979 revolution but quickly lost faith in the motives of the theocratic regime.
Like all high-ranking women officials, she was removed from her position as president of a Tehran court and given an administrative role.
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She exploited new rules to retire at the age of 36 before eventually setting up her own legal practice to defend the rights of people affected by regime policies, often for free.
She opted to stay out of the country following the assault on her practice to condemn state oppression following the protests that were crushed after the contested victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.
She spoke on Monday at a public event on Monday in London alongside Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, to put pressure on the regime.
She identified 12 other prisoners who were denied treatment and highlighted the case of one who died last month.
“My campaign now is securing the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience,” she said. “In prison nobody can hear me.”
Company Profile
Name: Direct Debit System
Started: Sept 2017
Based: UAE with a subsidiary in the UK
Industry: FinTech
Funding: Undisclosed
Investors: Elaine Jones
Number of employees: 8
Kandahar
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Stars: Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban, Ali Fazal
Rating: 2.5/5
The specs
Engine: 4.4-litre, twin-turbo V8
Transmission: eight-speed auto
Power: 617hp
Torque: 750Nm
Price: from Dh630,000
On sale: now
Traits of Chinese zodiac animals
Tiger:independent, successful, volatile
Rat:witty, creative, charming
Ox:diligent, perseverent, conservative
Rabbit:gracious, considerate, sensitive
Dragon:prosperous, brave, rash
Snake:calm, thoughtful, stubborn
Horse:faithful, energetic, carefree
Sheep:easy-going, peacemaker, curious
Monkey:family-orientated, clever, playful
Rooster:honest, confident, pompous
Dog:loyal, kind, perfectionist
Boar:loving, tolerant, indulgent
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Director: Peyton Reed
Stars: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors
Rating: 2/5
MATCH INFO
Qalandars 109-3 (10ovs)
Salt 30, Malan 24, Trego 23, Jayasuriya 2-14
Bangla Tigers (9.4ovs)
Fletcher 52, Rossouw 31
Bangla Tigers win by six wickets
The five pillars of Islam
Temple numbers
Expected completion: 2022
Height: 24 meters
Ground floor banquet hall: 370 square metres to accommodate about 750 people
Ground floor multipurpose hall: 92 square metres for up to 200 people
First floor main Prayer Hall: 465 square metres to hold 1,500 people at a time
First floor terrace areas: 2,30 square metres
Temple will be spread over 6,900 square metres
Structure includes two basements, ground and first floor
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Xpanceo
Started: 2018
Founders: Roman Axelrod, Valentyn Volkov
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Smart contact lenses, augmented/virtual reality
Funding: $40 million
Investor: Opportunity Venture (Asia)
'My Son'
Director: Christian Carion
Starring: James McAvoy, Claire Foy, Tom Cullen, Gary Lewis
Rating: 2/5
Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
Company profile
Company name: Fasset
Started: 2019
Founders: Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Daniel Ahmed
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $2.45 million
Current number of staff: 86
Investment stage: Pre-series B
Investors: Investcorp, Liberty City Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Primal Capital, Wealthwell Ventures, FHS Capital, VN2 Capital, local family offices
Profile box
Company name: baraka
Started: July 2020
Founders: Feras Jalbout and Kunal Taneja
Based: Dubai and Bahrain
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $150,000
Current staff: 12
Stage: Pre-seed capital raising of $1 million
Investors: Class 5 Global, FJ Labs, IMO Ventures, The Community Fund, VentureSouq, Fox Ventures, Dr Abdulla Elyas (private investment)
Women’s World T20, Asia Qualifier, in Bangkok
UAE fixtures Mon Nov 20, v China; Tue Nov 21, v Thailand; Thu Nov 23, v Nepal; Fri Nov 24, v Hong Kong; Sun Nov 26, v Malaysia; Mon Nov 27, Final
(The winners will progress to the Global Qualifier)
RESULT
Uruguay 3 Russia 0
Uruguay: Suárez (10'), Cheryshev (23' og), Cavani (90')
Russia: Smolnikov (Red card: 36')
Man of the match: Diego Godin (Uruguay)
PRIMERA LIGA FIXTURES
All times UAE (+4 GMT)
Saturday
Atletico Madrid v Sevilla (3pm)
Alaves v Real Madrid (6.15pm)
Malaga v Athletic Bilbao (8.30pm)
Girona v Barcelona (10.45pm)
Sunday
Espanyol v Deportivo la Coruna (2pm)
Getafe v Villarreal (6.15pm)
Eibar v Celta Vigo (8.30pm)
Las Palmas v Leganes (8.30pm)
Real Sociedad v Valencia (10.45pm)
Monday
Real Betis v Levante (11.pm)
UAE players with central contracts
Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Rameez Shahzad, Shaiman Anwar, Adnan Mufti, Mohammed Usman, Ghulam Shabbir, Ahmed Raza, Qadeer Ahmed, Amir Hayat, Mohammed Naveed and Imran Haider.
Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
It's up to you to go green
Nils El Accad, chief executive and owner of Organic Foods and Café, says going green is about “lifestyle and attitude” rather than a “money change”; people need to plan ahead to fill water bottles in advance and take their own bags to the supermarket, he says.
“People always want someone else to do the work; it doesn’t work like that,” he adds. “The first step: you have to consciously make that decision and change.”
When he gets a takeaway, says Mr El Accad, he takes his own glass jars instead of accepting disposable aluminium containers, paper napkins and plastic tubs, cutlery and bags from restaurants.
He also plants his own crops and herbs at home and at the Sheikh Zayed store, from basil and rosemary to beans, squashes and papayas. “If you’re going to water anything, better it be tomatoes and cucumbers, something edible, than grass,” he says.
“All this throwaway plastic - cups, bottles, forks - has to go first,” says Mr El Accad, who has banned all disposable straws, whether plastic or even paper, from the café chain.
One of the latest changes he has implemented at his stores is to offer refills of liquid laundry detergent, to save plastic. The two brands Organic Foods stocks, Organic Larder and Sonnett, are both “triple-certified - you could eat the product”.
The Organic Larder detergent will soon be delivered in 200-litre metal oil drums before being decanted into 20-litre containers in-store.
Customers can refill their bottles at least 30 times before they start to degrade, he says. Organic Larder costs Dh35.75 for one litre and Dh62 for 2.75 litres and refills will cost 15 to 20 per cent less, Mr El Accad says.
But while there are savings to be had, going green tends to come with upfront costs and extra work and planning. Are we ready to refill bottles rather than throw them away? “You have to change,” says Mr El Accad. “I can only make it available.”
Herc's Adventures
Developer: Big Ape Productions
Publisher: LucasArts
Console: PlayStation 1 & 5, Sega Saturn
Rating: 4/5
Learn more about Qasr Al Hosn
In 2013, The National's History Project went beyond the walls to see what life was like living in Abu Dhabi's fabled fort:
Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.