CHAPEL HILL -- Though a week has passed since the trial of the seven Baha'i leaders in Iran -- including the relative of a Chapel Hill resident -- on Jan. 12, no news of the results or the next step in a questionable legal process have reached the ears of friends and family.
The seven on trial -- two women and five men -- are Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli, Vahid Tizfahm and Saeid Rezaie, the brother-in-law of Chapel Hill resident Azadeh Perry.
The seven were arrested in the spring of 2008 and taken to Evin prison in Tehran, Iran. They spent the first year without any formal charges or access to a lawyer, and though they have since been accused of spying for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and spreading propaganda against Islam, the prisoners still had limited, if any, access to their lawyers.
The original trial date, set for July 2009, was pushed back to August, then October and finally to January, when no observers were allowed to witness the three-hour trial and lawyers had to argue their way inside.
Edition 3 out of Talking Sidewalks
CHAPEL HILL -- "If home is where the Heart is, I lost my Heart..." begins a poem in the latest edition of Talking Sidewalks, a literary magazine composed entirely of short stories, poems and photographs from authors and artists who are experiencing homelessness in the Chapel Hill area.
A public release party and author reading for the newest edition of Talking Sidewalks will be held at Flyleaf Books, 752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The event is free.
Talking Sidewalks is an initiative of Homeless Outreach Poverty Eradication (HOPE), a committee of the Campus Y, the center for social justice at UNC Chapel Hill. Through creative writing and photography classes, HOPE offers homeless individuals in our community a creative outlet for artistic expression.
This is the third edition of Talking Sidewalks, which is available for free throughout the community as well as online at www.talkingsidewalks.com.
For more information contact Meg McGurk at (919) 967-9440 or meg@downtownchapelhill.com.
