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British Newspaper Names Iranian Protester 'Person of Year'

   VOA News 26 December 2009
   FILE  -  This  photo  dated  May  2009  and provided by Caspian Makan,
   37-year-old  photojournalist  in  Tehran who identified himself as the
   boyfriend  of  Neda  Agha-Soltan. The photo purports to show Neda Agha
   Soltan whose death on a Tehran, Iran, street was captur

Photo: AP/Courtesy-Caspian Makan

   Neda Agha-Soltan (file)

   The  British  newspaper  the  Times has named an Iranian woman who was
   killed during Iran's post-election unrest its "person of the year."
   The  Times said Saturday Neda Agha-Soltan has became the global symbol
   of  the  Islamic "regime's brutality, and of the remarkable courage of
   Iran's  opposition  in  a  region  where other populations are all too
   easily suppressed by despotic governments."
   Soltan  was  shot  and  killed  during  massive protests following the
   disputed   re-election   of  Iranian  President  Mahmoud  Ahmadinejad.
   Thousands  of  opposition  supporters took to the streets alleging the
   June  12  vote  was  rigged.  Soltan's death was captured on video and
   broadcast throughout the world.
   Protesters  say she was killed by Iranian security forces during their
   crack-down on demonstrators.
   The  Times  said  Saturday that Soltan helped to inspire an opposition
   movement  in  Iran,  which  a  "systematic  campaign  of arrests, show
   trials,  beatings,  torture  and security force violence has failed to
   crush."

   Some information for this report was provided by AFP.

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