Besides the miscarriage of justice, note the differential in blood money: if the victim is not a Muslim, or female, the payment is less. From CP, :
(CP) – An Iranian court’s acquittal Saturday of the man charged in the murder of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi came as no surprise to her son who said “the only justice we have come to expect from Iran is injustice.”
Stephan Hachemi vowed to continue his fight for justice saying he was looking to Ottawa and the International Court of Justice in The Hague to take up the case. “This is Canada’s responsibility to do so,” Hachemi, 26, said in an e-mail from Montreal to The Canadian Press hours after the verdict was issued in Tehran.
“Beside the ICJ, I now more then ever deserve answer from Canada. I’m expecting to meet with the minister of foreign affairs to be assured of the other effective measures (Canada) is intending to take.”
Earlier in Tehran, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who led the four-member legal defence team, said the court which acquitted the lone man charged in the beating death was not competent and the legal proceedings were flawed.
“I’m required to work until my last breath to make sure that justice is done to my client,” Ebadi said.
She also threatened to take the matter to international organizations.
“I’ll protest this verdict. If the appeals court and other legal stages fail to heed our objections, we will use all domestic and international facilities to meet the legal rights of my client,” an angry Ebadi said.
The intelligence agent charged with killing Kazemi, counterespionage expert Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi, pleaded not guilty during the trial. He was the only person implicated by the judiciary in what is called Kazemi’s “semi-premeditated murder.”
Kazemi, a Montreal-based freelance journalist of Iranian origin, died July 10, 2003, while in detention for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during student-led protests against the government….
Ebadi said the court ruled that Iran would give blood money, or compensation, to Kazemi’s family. Payments of blood money are common in the Middle East.
The average compensation now paid to relatives of an Iranian Muslim man killed is about $24,800 Cdn. The payment is about half that if the victim was Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian or a woman, regardless of her religion.