Ebadi, Shirin

Ebadi, Shirin

(born 1947, Hamadan, Iran) Iranian lawyer, writer, and teacher. After earning a law degree from the University of Tehran (1969), Ebadi became one of the first women judges in Iran but was forced to resign after the 1979 revolution and the establishment of an Islamic republic. She then practiced law, taught at the University of Tehran, and became noted for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights, especially those of women and children in Iran. In 2000 she was briefly jailed after distributing evidence that implicated government officials in the murder of university students in 1999. Found guilty of “disturbing public opinion,” she was given a prison term, barred from practicing law for five years, and fined, although her sentence was later suspended. In 2003 Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, becoming the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to receive the award.