Iran's authorities have arrested more than 32 women activists protesting outside a courthouse in Tehran.

The protesters were showing solidarity with five women on trial for organising a protest last June against laws they say discriminate against women.

The five have been charged with endangering national security, propaganda against the state and taking part in an illegal gathering.

US pressure group, Human Rights Watch, has urged an end to the prosecution.

It said the women had been exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

The five are organisers of a demonstration last June which was violently broken up by the police and led to the arrest of 70 people, many of them innocent bystanders.

'Intimidation'

The BBC's Frances Harrison, reporting from the demonstration, says almost all the leaders of Iran's women's movement were arrested.

The women held up banners outside the revolutionary court, saying: "We have the right to hold peaceful protests".

The aim of the women is to draw attention to discriminatory Islamic laws on polygamy and child custody that often cause great suffering to women, our correspondent says.

When the five women on trial left the court building they were arrested again, along with their lawyer.

Parveen Adalan, one of those on trial, said her lawyer had not yet seen any of the evidence against her, although she has been questioned five times by the intelligence agencies.

"They didn't give them our documents to read, so we don't know what's happening," she told the BBC.

One of the women demonstrators, Nahid Mirhaj, accused the police of trying to intimidate them.

She said the police chief was "using obscene words and describing us as 'misfits'".

Our correspondent says police and plain-clothes security men chased away journalists and onlookers and then loaded the women onto a curtained minibus and drove them away.

The women believe the authorities are trying to intimidate them to prevent any kind of protest during International Women's Day on 8 March.

Scenes of beaten protestors is nothing new in America. "Free specch zone" Bush alternative routes to avoid them. Shenahn arrested a dozen times stc.

Hypocrite again.

shehan was doing illegal things like trespasing etc....... please you are a shehan supporter which is pretty sad.... No one has taken her right to protest away it she who has abused this right...

Just because you have the right to protest, doesn't mean that I have to inconvience myself by driving through it. I am sure that the secret service feels the same way, besides if your protesting you might also want to harm someone, just maybe.

__________________
An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.

When the world around you, is no longer what you preceived it to be, when left is right and right is wrong, and it all begins to crumble before your eyes, when you wish that you could just wake up from this nightmare......you open your eyes to the dawn of another day...and just sigh....it is real....welcome to the world of liberalism....BD

Cindy Sheehan has never been arrested for protesting. All of her arrest have come from trespassing or otherwise overstepping the rather liberal laws in this country. You surely cannot equate the arrest of these women in Iran with the arrest of a woman who's entire agenda is to be arrested in order to stay in the news. Your implication that protestors are being beaten today is just too silly for words. Or are you dredging up ancient history again?

Nate, you know that if all else fails bring up the past. Posters of both sides are like my ex wife in that regards.

__________________
An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.

LOL, like the argument that on May 1, 1968 I left my underwear on the floor in the bathroom?

Rubbish. Thers no excuse for the prevention of protests by the bush admin.

I didn't realize Rob was a closet communist. Maybe he should move to China where his views on freedom are the norm.

__________________
http://tinyurl.com/25trx9

03/04/07 "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)

02/25/07 "There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action." ~ Bertrand Russell, British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970)