Ebadi accuses Iranian court of obstruction

At a news conference in Tehran, Ebadi said: "Judge and lawyer are each one wing of the angel of justice, but one of them has been amputated."

Ebadi, who heads a group of Iranian human rights lawyers, said: "Lawyers have been in and out of jail. I have also been in prison. They keep summonsing me here and there.

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"I have been subject to threats for 10 years," she said, adding that she had again received a summons and "the judge himself did not know why".

Ebadi said those detained by the legal authorities faced an impossible task in choosing a human rights lawyer to defend them.

"How can they decide which lawyer can appear you in a case and which cannot?" she asked, giving the example of Roozbeh Mir-Ebrahimi, arrested last autumn in a crackdown on journalists and freed at the end of 2004.

Standing next to her, Mir-Ebrahimi told the press conference: "My family asked Ebadi and Mohammad Seifzadeh to defend me but I was told in prison that with the charge against me I risked 15 years in prison, and that with these (lawyers) I would receive 25 years.

"My interrogator forced me to reject them and said that they were only serving their own interests."