CNN.com - Nobel winner slams war on terror - Dec. 10, 2003

[ravi <gadfly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/12/10/nobel.peace/index.html>

Nobel winner slams war on terror

OSLO, Norway --This year's Nobel Peace Prize winner says the September
11 attacks have been used as an excuse to violate international law and
human rights.

Iran's Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the prize, did not
mention the U.S. by name but was clearly referring to Washington and its
allies in a speech prepared for delivery at the official award ceremony
in Oslo, Norway.

Ebadi, recognized for her fight for children's and women's rights in
Iran, collected a gold medal and the $1.4 million award from the head of
the Norwegian Nobel Committee at Oslo City Hall.

The 56-year-old lawyer said Wednesday: "In the past two years, some
states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights
by using the events of September 11 and the war on international
terrorism as a pretext.

"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been
justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism,"
she said.

Ebadi also slammed Washington for ignoring U.N. resolutions in the
Middle East while using them as a pretext for launching a war in Iraq.

"Why is it that in the past 35 years, dozens of U.N. resolutions
concerning the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the state of
Israel have not been implemented properly?" she asked.

"Yet, in the past 12 years, the state and people of Iraq, once on the
recommendation of the Security Council, and the second time in spite of
U.N. Security Council opposition, were subjected to attack, military
assault, economic sanctions, and ultimately, military occupation?"

U.S. President George W. Bush's administration launched the Iraq war in
March saying President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
But the war did not have explicit backing from the Security Council.

The Nobel laureate also criticized what she called breaches of the
Geneva conventions at the United States' Guantanamo military prison in Cuba.

Nobel experts said the five members of the Nobel committee, who included
three women, probably chose Ebadi as a way of promoting change in Iran.

The Middle Eastern nation was once branded part of an "axis of evil" by
U.S. President George W. Bush with pre-war Iraq and North Korea.

Ebadi received Norway's Rafto Prize in 2001 for her sustained fight for
human rights and democracy in the Islamic country.

She received her law degree from the University of Tehran and, as a
lawyer, has been involved in several controversial political cases. As a
result, she has been imprisoned by Iranian authorities on numerous
occasions.

>From 1975 to 1979, she served as president of the city court of Tehran
and became the country's first woman judge judge. But after the
revolution in 1979 she was forced to resign and now works as a lawyer
and also teaches at the University of Tehran.

She successfully campaiged to reveal those responsible for the 1999
attack on Tehran University students. Several students died in the violence.

Ebadi is the founder and leader of the Association for Support of
Children's Rights in Iran. She is also the author of a number of books
on human rights.