A Canadian freelance photographer has died in Tehran after being arrested and
taken to a hospital with what relatives said were serious head injuries, government officials in Ottawa say. Montreal-based Zahra Kazemi, 54, was detained on June 23 after taking pictures of Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where many dissidents are jailed. She was declared brain dead earlier this week. Her death appears likely to mar what had been relatively smooth relations between Canada and Iran.
| Just a temporary blip, I'm sure. After all, it was a lot harder on her than it was on Cretien. Six months from now it'll all be in the past... |
Canadian officials said Foreign Minister Bill Graham had told Ottawa's ambassador to Tehran to seek an immediate meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi to find out exactly what happened to Kazemi.
| Somebody beat her head in. You need a meeting for that? |
Friends and relatives — who insist Kazemi was beaten into a coma — said on Saturday the most important thing was to ensure her body was returned to Canada for an autopsy. "This is all that counts right now ... we demand that the Iranian government allow the repatriation of her body," Kazemi's son Stephane Hachemi told reporters in Montreal. Hachemi told Reuters earlier in the week that Iranian doctors had diagnosed his mother as having a fractured skull. In Tehran, an official at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance said Kazemi had died from "a brain attack", IRNA news agency said.
| After having her head beaten in — that's often the result... |
"During the first stages of interrogation she said she was ill and was transferred to hospital where she had this attack," IRNA quoted foreign press department director Mohammad Hossein Khoshvaght as saying.
| "How were we to know her skull was that thin?" |
He said Kazemi had been arrested taking pictures outside Evin prison despite signs saying photography was forbidden. She had been at the prison to interview relatives of prisoners arrested during protests last month, he added. |