TEHRAN, July 17 (AFP) - Iran's hardline judiciary was accused Saturday of trying an innocent man for the killing in custody of an Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi in order to protect one of its own senior officials.
In a tense resumption of the controversial trial, a lawyers led by Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, who are representing Kazemi's enraged family, told the court prosecutors had overlooked key elements of the case.
They quoted witnesses as saying Kazemi, detained in June 2003 for taking pictures outside Tehran's notorious Evin prison, was hit on the head by a senior judicial representative at the jail immediately after her arrest.
"After being struck, she fell and after that she could not walk," the court was told. The justice official in the prison who could be implicated was identified as Mohammad Bakhshi.
"Why do these elements not figure in the case?" asked one of the family lawyers, Mohammad Seifzadeh.
Kazemi died from a brain haemorrhage in hospital on July 10, 2003.
The judiciary initially insisted she had died of a stroke, but a government report later revealed the 54-year-old photographer was beaten into a coma while being interrogated.
Between her arrest and her admission to hospital, she spent several days of being shuttled between the custody of judicial prosecutors, the police and the intelligence ministry -- rival power centres in a complex political machinery.
The lawyers also backed the not guilty plea of the intelligence agent on trial for "semi-intentional murder", 42-year-old Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi.
But the prosecution's representative, Jafar Reshadati, said this hypothesis was "medically impossible" given that the fatal blow apparently occurred several days later.
In her comments to the judge, Ebadi insisted it was a case of "premeditated murder" and demanded the trial be moved to a provincial criminal tribunal that is made up of three to five judges and which usually deals with more serious cases.
The charges against the agent carry a possible penalty of up to three years in jail and the payment of blood money to the family of the victim. In Iran blood money for a woman -- half that for a man -- amounts to 80 million rials, or around 9,200 dollars.
Speaking to the press during a brief break in the proceedings, the accused vowed he would fight the charges.
"I am not prepared to accept any compromise. They have chosen the wrong scapegoat," he said of the judiciary, a bastion of religious hardliners. The intelligence ministry is seen as closer to the reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami
The mother of the victim, Ezzat Kazemi, also made a damning declaration in court.
She alleged her 54-year-old daughter had been tortured, and said after the death she had been pressured to agree to a hasty burial in southern Iran despite demands from the Canadian government and other family members for the body to be repatriated to Canada.
"I saw traces of torture and injuries on her body. They broke her fingers. I want revenge," she said, before breaking into tears.
"They forced me to accept to bury her. They threatened me. Is that Islam?"
The judge quickly asserted the scars were the result of hospital treatment and the autopsy.
Despite concerns the trial would be held behind closed doors, several journalists and foreign diplomats -- including Canada's ambassador to Tehran -- were allowed into court, an AFP correspondent said.
Also in court were diplomats from the embassies of Britain and the Netherlands. The Dutch currently hold the European Union presidency and are one of the most determined advocates of human rights issues with the EU bloc.
Canada had during the week announced it would recall its ambassador from Tehran in protest at being barred from observing the proceedings, and says it is considering sanctions against the hardening clerical regime.
The case has badly damaged ties between Tehran and Ottawa, and has also focussed concerns over what rights groups assert is the endemic use of beatings and torture in Iran's prison system.
But Iran, which does not recognise dual nationality, have shrugged off pressure from Ottawa by insisting the trial is a "domestic affair".