An Iranian national has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud before the Honorable Ricardo M. Urbina in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.

Shahram Shajirat, a citizen of Iran, was indicted in January 2004 along with his wife and co-conspirator, Soraya Marghi, in connection with a visas-for-sale ring operated out of the U.S. Consulate in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in the summer of 1999. Through this scheme, at least 25 Iranian men, women and children purchased U.S. non-immigrant visas from Shajirat and Marghi for travel to the United States without undergoing the required security protocols. As part of his plea of guilty, Shajirat will cooperate fully with U.S. authorities to identify each of the visa recipients who illegally received non-immigrant visas.

The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Judge Urbina set a sentencing date for April 12, 2007.

Marghi, who has dual Canadian and Iranian citizenship, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud in connection with the same illegal scheme before Judge Urbina on October 20, 2005. Marghi has cooperated with U.S. authorities.

The case is being prosecuted by Matthew C. Solomon and William J. Corcoran of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, headed by Acting Chief Edward C. Nucci. The case is being investigated by the Visa Fraud Branch of the Diplomatic Security Service of the U.S. Department of State.

Two historians who lost a plagiarism case against "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown launched an appeal on Tuesday to have the verdict overturned.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who wrote "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" which they say Brown copied, were at London's High Court to hear the opening of the appeal.

Their lawyer, Jonathan Rayner James, will argue that the original judge was wrong to dismiss the idea of a "central theme" in the historians' research which he says was used extensively in six chapters of "The Da Vinci Code."

"The ... judge 'rejected' the central theme because, inter alia, it was not the substantial part of HBHG (The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail)," he said in a printed summary of his argument to be presented in court.

"This approach is incorrect; it does not have to be the substantial part of HBHG ...

"Was there enough of an expenditure of skill and labor to warrant copyright protection? The appellants submit that there was."

Brown, who was called as a witness during the original case last year, is not expected to be present for the appeal.

Judge Peter Smith ruled in April that the central themes were too general or abstract to be protected by copyright.

Brown said at the time that novelists must be allowed to draw from historical works without fear of being sued.

"The Da Vinci Code" is one of the most successful novels of all time, selling more than 40 million copies worldwide and being turned into a major Hollywood movie. It is published in Britain by Random House, as is "The Holy Blood."

The appeal is likely to focus on legal argument, and lack the original case's colorful and often heated debate about the Merovingian monarchy, the knights Templar and Jesus' bloodline.

Both "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" raise the possibility that Jesus had a child by Mary Magdalene, that she fled to France after the Crucifixion and that Christ's bloodline survives to this day.

They also associate Magdalene with the Holy Grail.

As in the case last year, the appeal will also focus on Brown's wife Blythe, who emerged as a key contributor to "The Da Vinci Code" through research and ideas.

"In this case, Mrs. Brown knew that she was exclusively using HBHG for that subject matter comprising the Langdon/Teabing lectures," Rayner James said, referring to the six chapters around which the case centers.

"She took a 'short cut' through the research and investigation and simply lifted the material from HBHG."

The appeal is expected to wind up on Friday. The judgment is likely to be delivered in written form at a later date.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the widow of a man who died in a Texas jail from pursuing a $5 million jury verdict.

The court without comment declined to consider the appeal of Jessie Dorado, whose husband died in an El Paso jail after being denied medication to control seizures. Eduardo Miranda, a Mexican national, was a physician who was arrested in 1997 on a two-year-old drunk driving charge. He died 74 hours later.

Miranda lived legally in El Paso, but practiced medicine in Juarez, Mexico.

His family invoked a federal civil rights law authorizing suits against state and local government officials who violate a person's constitutional rights. A jury awarded Dorado $5 million after deciding that the jail's doctor knew of Miranda's medical needs and failed to minister to him.

A Texas appeals court threw out the verdict. The court said the jail doctor had not acted with deliberate indifference. The appeals court also said Miranda's lawyers presented little evidence that the jail doctor set policy at the facility, a threshold plaintiffs often must cross in civil rights lawsuits against government officials.

Bryan Wagner, the private investigator involved in the Hewlett-Packard corporate spying scandal pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges of conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Wagner was accused of using used the social security number of a targeted reporter to obtain the reporter's telephone records, which Wagner provided to other co-conspirators. The charges carry a possible five-year sentence for conspiracy and a mandatory minimum of two years imprisonment for the aggravated identity theft charge. Under Wagner's plea agreement, he will cooperate with prosecutors in future investigations in exchange for a lighter sentence.

In November, Wagner pleaded not guilty to state charges of using false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, unauthorized access to computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy to commit those crimes stemming from his role in the corporate spying scandal. The scandal prompted Congress to pass anti-pretexting legislation in 2006, criminalizing obtaining phone records through fraud or lying.

Germany’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, announced Friday that it will not hear the appeal of the 15-year sentence of convicted September 11 conspirator Mounir al-Motassadeq. Moroccan-born Motassadeq has another appeal to German appellate courts filed, but it is unknown when it will be considered. Lawyers for Motassadeq have also said they may take the case to the European Court of Justice.

Motassadeq admitted to attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and being friends with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, but denies knowledge of the attack. The court found Motassadeq guilty because he knew his accomplices planned to hijack planes, even if he remained ignorant as to the details of the attacks. The court also found that Motassadeq aided the hijackers by funneling money and helping them maintain appearances of being university students. Motassadeq's defense team hoped to force a new trial with witnesses previously prevented from testifying by the United States government. Motassadeq's first conviction was overturned in 2004, in part due to concerns over access to witnesses, but on retrial American officials refused to allow terror suspects in US custody to testify in court, instead agreeing only to provide summaries of its interrogations of prisoners.

A former Hewlett-Packard Co. private investigator pleaded guilty to posing as a reporter and company directors to get telephone records for an internal probe of boardroom leaks.

Bryan Wagner, 29, of Littleton, Colorado, admitted identification theft and conspiracy today before U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose, California. Wagner's lawyer said his client didn't know he was working for the company and was assured his actions were legal. Wagner agreed to assist the U.S. in its investigation of the leak probe at Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest personal-computer maker.

``Its kind of a one-way street,'' Fogel said of Wagner's cooperation agreement. ``You are making a promise to the government. The government is not promising they will make a recommendation of leniency.''

Disclosure of Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard's probe led to the resignations of former Chairman Patricia Dunn, General Counsel Ann Baskins and three other executives. Wagner's defense lawyer, Stephen Naratil, said his client has been cooperating with prosecutors. Wagner faces as much as seven years in prison at his sentencing on June 20.

Wagner and two other private detectives, Ronald DeLia and Matthew Depante, were accused of faking identifications, a technique known as pretexting, to get phone records of board members and journalists.