Yesterday we announced the news that Nobel Laureate lawyer Shirin Ebadi had agreed to defend Haleh. Today, the latest news from the Washington Post is that Iranian authorities are denying Ebadi’s request to represent Haleh - and denying access to Haleh in prison.

Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the lead attorney for imprisoned American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, charged yesterday that the Iranian government has turned down her request to represent the Potomac resident, refused information on the charges against Esfandiari and denied a legal team access to its client.

After Iran announced yesterday that Iranian and U.S. diplomats are to hold talks on the future of Iraq on May 28, Ebadi said the arrest of people such as Esfandiari is “not a very good starting point for negotiations between the two countries…

“I’ve known her for many years, and I know she is innocent,” Ebadi said in an interview in Washington before speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2000, Ebadi, a human rights lawyer, was imprisoned for her activities in a case in the same notorious jail where Esfandiari is being held.

Ebadi said Iran is breaking its own laws in denying Esfandiari access to legal representation, which Esfandiari had requested in a telephone call to her mother from Evin Prison. Esfandiari, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen who had lived in the United States for more than a quarter century, went to Iran to visit her ailing 93-year-old mother.

“Our goal is to inform Iranians and the international community that the government is not respecting its own laws and regulations,” Ebadi said. “Her arrest was illegal.”

The Nobel laureate noted that Esfandiari did not go public about her ordeal after she was put under house arrest at the beginning of the year, even during six weeks of interrogations by Iran’s intelligence ministry. “In return for my client’s goodwill, the government went ahead with this,” Ebadi said.

Read further coverage of this development.