Iranian women take key role in protests: Via USATODAY.com .

Negar Mortazavi, who lives in Washington, D.C., stays in touch with Iranian friends who have been protesting in Tehran. On Saturday, a male student described on the phone violent clashes between protesters, police and plainclothes militia.

One scene stood out, and "he couldn't believe his eyes," said Mortazavi, 27, who came to the USA from Iran in 2002 and is helping to coordinate protests in the United States. "He decided it was time to start running when the police were coming. He turned back and saw some women still standing," she says. "These women are not afraid."

Iranian women have been on the front lines of anti-government protests challenging the official results of the June 12 election, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the victor.

The face of a woman has become the symbol of the opposition. Music student Neda Agha Soltan, 27, was captured on video dying of a gunshot wound. The unsettling scene was transmitted around the world, and even President Obama referred to it this week.
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Iran's Neda killing 'was illegal': Via Al Jazeera English - Middle East.

Shirin Ebadi, a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel peace prize winner, has told Al Jazeera that she is prepared to represent the family of a young woman shot dead during a protest in Tehran.

The woman, named as Neda Agha Soltan on social-networking websites, has become a symbol for people protesting against the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

Ebadi told Al Jazeera on Wednesday: "I am personally prepared to legally represent her family against the people who ordered the shooting and those who fired at her.

"This act was against the law.

"Neda had not participated in the rally but, even if she had, they did not have the right to shoot her."
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