Earlier this month, Ebadi, a lawyer and rights campaigner, became the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, Iranian reformers have looked to her to rally opposition to hard-liners who say the country's cleric-controlled system of government cannot be changed.

After a speech Wednesday that drew wild applause from over 1,000 students at Amir Kabir University, Ebadi made a small but telling gesture: shaking hands with two men, Habibollah Peyman and Mohammad Maleki, both prominent dissidents. Under Iran's Islamic-inspired laws, it is a crime for men and women who are not related to shake hands in public. Possible punishments range from jail to flogging.

In her speech, Ebadi named some of Iran's prominent jailed reformers and intellectuals.

Aghajari, a history professor at Tehran's Teachers Training University, was sentenced to death last year for questioning clerical rule in a speech. His sentence was reduced following nationwide protests and he now is serving a four-year jail term.

Abdi, a top member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, is serving an eight-year sentence after being convicted in February of selling classified information to foreign intelligence agencies, a charge stemming from a poll he conducted that showed strong public support for dialogue with the United States.

Lawyer Zarafshan was found guilty last year on charges of divulging state secrets and illegal possession of a firearm after speaking out about the murders of Iranian dissidents. He is serving a five-year sentence.

Dozens of political activists, journalists and others have been jailed on vague charges of working against the Islamic establishment. Ebadi herself was convicted in a closed trial three years ago of slandering government officials. She spent three weeks in jail before being given a suspended sentence.

She added the road to her Nobel was "paved by our ancestors, including Cyrus the Great, and his Charter of Human Rights," referring to an ancient document by the king of Persia, precursor of what is now Iran, who founded his dynasty in 550 B.C.

"When the world was under suppression and pain, the most powerful emperor of the world undertook not to oppress his people and not to impose his views on his nation .... We are the children of that emperor," Ebadi said.

After the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ruling clerics banned registering Cyrus as a name for children in a symbolic strike at Iran's pre-Islamic history.

Ebadi, though, told the students not to lose hope that democratic reforms in Iran can be achieved peacefully.

"If we compare the situation now to 20 years ago, we have made some small progress," she said. "This, although little, was because of your efforts. So, insist on your demands and don't get disappointed".

The student news agency ISNA said Friday representatives from several women's rights groups, accompanied by prominent female MM Elaheh Koula’i and woman film director Tahmineh Milani, met with Ebadi earlier in the week to seek her help in the controversial case.

Last month Afsaneh Noruzi, 32, was notified that she would soon hang for the killing.

In March, a court condemned her for the stabbing death of a high-ranking officer she testified had tried to rape her in his office on the Persian Gulf island of Kish in 1997.

Ms Maliheh Mohammadi, the sister of Manoochehr and Akbar, two prominent student activists who are in prison since four years ago on charges of subversive activities against the Islamic Republic and reported to have been badly tortured also called on Mrs. Ebadi for help.

Mr. Manoochehr Mohammadi received 30 lashes on Monday, as ordered by an Islamic Revolution judge.