Iran human rights lawyer sentenced to 5 years in prison News
Iran human rights lawyer sentenced to 5 years in prison

[JURIST] Iranian human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani [Amnesty International appeal; Wikipedia profile] says he has received a five-year prison sentence for disclosing confidential information and engaging in propaganda against the regime, even though neither he nor his lawyers appeared in court or saw the primary evidence against him. Working with Tehran's Defenders of Human Rights Center, which is led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi [Nobel profile], Soltani has represented dissident journalist Akbar Ganji [PEN American Center profile] and the family of Canadian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi [CBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive], who died in Iranian custody in July 2003.

Soltani told AFP he was cleared of spying charges. He was arrested a year ago [JURIST report] while defending two people charged with spying on Iran's nuclear program. Soltani was jailed for more than seven months before he was freed on bail. AFP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.