TEHRAN, 1 August 2005 — A colleague of Nobel prize-winning Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi was arrested at the weekend on suspicion of disclosing information in a nuclear espionage case, the judiciary said yesterday.

Abdolfattah Soltani was arrested Saturday while he holding a sit-in at a Tehran bar building to protest against a search of his house and an arrest warrant issued against him. Until now it was not known why he was arrested.

“Based on a comprehensive report by the Intelligence Ministry, he has talked about confidential issues of nuclear spies inside and outside the country,” judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimi Rad told the student agency ISNA.

Soltani, a member of Ebadi’s center to defend human rights, represents Iran’s highest profile political prisoner, journalist Akbar Ganji, the family of murdered Iranian-Canadian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, and also suspects in the nuclear espionage case.

Iran announced in 2004 that it had arrested a dozen people on suspicion of spying on Iran’s nuclear program for US and Israeli intelligence services. Two of them are due to be tried on Aug. 2 and 20, Karimi Rad said. Another has already been sentenced, he said without specifying the details. That case is currently pending for appeal, Karimi Rad said.

Israel and the United States have spearheaded accusations that Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal — charges that Iran flatly denies. Soltani’s arrest immediately sparked concern of further restrictions on human rights lawyers. Other arrests “are probable anyway,” Ebadi said. “This has not made me worried, but regretful,” she said.

“I think our center is being threatened and chased from many dimensions by unreasonable totalitarians,” one of Soltani’s colleagues, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, now his lawyer, said. “We think this could happen to any of us,” Dadkhah said.

Meanwhile, Ganji recorded the 51st day of his hunger strike, which he has undertaken in protest at the conditions of detention and to demand his unconditional release.