Who says the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t make a difference?
Thousands of people have greeted Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi in extraordinary scenes at Tehran’s city airport on her return to the Iranian capital.
Human rights groups and non-governmental organisations, swelled by crowds of local people, gathered at the city airport to give her a hero’s welcome.
The human rights activist, who has already used her elevated profile to urge the Iranian Government to allow greater freedom of speech, called for political prisoners to be released as she stepped off the plane.
Iranian blogger Hader is upbeat about Ebadi and thinks she should run for president next year:
Although I personally think she is more or less a conservative person in her political framework, she is actually far more radical than Khatami, the current president. The bottom line is that she believes in a secular government and she is backed and advised by a group of secular intellectuals.
The leader has previously proven fragile in a few occasions when the social and international pressure has been strong and he certainly is not tough enough to tolerate all this pressure again.
