Lawyer for British Embassy worker jailed in Iran is optimistic: Via Los Angeles Times.

Reporting from Beirut — The lawyer for a British Embassy employee in Tehran arrested and under investigation for subterfuge today refuted reports that his client had been formally charged, saying he was optimistic the Iranian national would be released in the coming days.

Authorities today also blocked access to the website of a pro-reform group of seminary scholars in the holy city of Qom that has joined other reformist clergy in sharply criticizing last month's vote as authorities continued a crackdown against supporters of failed presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who has alleged massive fraud.

And the head of the judiciary Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi today has issued a directive to Iranian courts allowing them to sentence anyone working with satellite television channels or Internet networking websites to up to 10 years in jail, according to several news agencies.

Hossein Rassam, 44, is the top political analyst at Britain's mission in Iran, where he headed a staff of eight or nine who were all arrested on suspicion of promoting or taking part in weeks of unrest that followed the disputed reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which was marred by opposition claims of vote fraud.

"I think his situation will be fixed soon," said Abdul-Samad Khoramshahi, his lawyer, who also represented jailed journalist Roxana Saberi. "I think that in the next few days I will get good news."

Khoramshahi said he visited the Revolutionary Court this morning to discuss the case of Rassam, who remains under investigation. Authorities have not yet formally lodged a complaint against him, but could decide to do so in a week.

The arrest of Rassam and his colleagues has upped the international confrontation between Iran and the West over the election and its aftermath, in which images of baton-wielding plainclothes militiamen beating demonstrators were broadcast around the world.

Tehran has accused London of planning and fomenting the unrest in an attempt to depict its greatest domestic political challenge in 30 years as a foreign plot.

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