Each year, the Foundation honours an individual who has exhibited moral courage through their actions on behalf of others with the Jan Karski Award for Moral Courage.

This award is named in honour of the late Jan Karski, a Polish diplomat during World War II, who risked his life to expose the tragic early years of the Holocaust and met personally with Roosevelt and Churchill to urge their intervention.

"The 2003 Award will be given to imprisoned Iranian dissidents Professor Hashem Aqajari and Abbas Amir Entezam at our 4th Annual Jan Karski Awards Celebration on November 25th at the Embassy of Poland in Washington, D.C.", the Warsaw-based Foundation said.

Professor Aqajari is an Iranian scholar whose calls for a progressive Islam respecting civil rights and separation of Church and State led to his imprisonment by authorities and a death sentence. Massive student protests led to this decree being lifted but he remains in prison. Mr. Abbas Amir Entezam, the longest-serving prisoner of conscience in Iran, has remained in jail for his repeated insistence upon a secular government in Iran.

On 10 October, the Norwegian Nobel Academy bestowed its prestigious Peace Award for 2003 to Iranian lawyer and human rights campaigner Shirin Ebadi, the first Iranian and Muslim woman to get the Prize.

The Foundation's inaugural award for Moral Courage was presented to Karski himself in 2000. The 2001 award was given to Congressman John Lewis for his actions during the Civil Rights Movement. The 2002 award was given posthumously to Father Mychal Judge who died while ministering to fallen firemen in the World Trade Center on September 11th.

In the absence of the two winners, the awards would be handed to Dr Abdolkarim Soroosh, an Iranian scholar and islamist reformist teaching now in Harvard University on behalf of professor Aqajari and to Ms. Elham, a daughter of Mr. Amir Entezam, in the presence of representatives from international human rights organisations like he London-based Amnesty International.

Also some Iranian scholars, including Mrs. Azar Nafisi, a professor at the John Hopkins University and Mrs. Mahnaz Afkhami, from Iranian Studies Institute in Washington D.C. and the President of the Jan Karski Foundation would address the ceremonies.

The foundation also sponsors an international juried film competition which bestows the Jan Karski Film Award each year to a filmmaker whose work documents an act of moral courage. In 2000, the Foundation honoured "School Prayer: A Community at War", by Slawomir Grunberg. In 2001, "A Force More Powerful" by Steve York was selected. Last year, the award went to "9/11" by Jules and Gideon Naudet and James Hanlon. ENDS JAN KARSKI AWARD 241103