Learn Farsi: وکیل از متهم دفاع نمی‌کرد. - The lawyer was not defending the accused.

For compound verbs like دفاع کردن (to defend), the prefixes only attach to the verb part (کردن). To make it negative past continuous, you add نمی‌ (ne-mi-) to the past stem کرد (kard). The noun part دفاع stays completely separate, giving us دفاع نمی‌کرد.

The English translation says 'defending the accused', so why is the word از (from) in the Farsi sentence?

Many verbs in Farsi require a specific preposition that doesn't match English. The verb دفاع کردن (to defend) always takes the preposition از (from) before the person or thing being defended. You can think of it as providing defense 'from' or 'on behalf of' the accused.

How do the negative prefix and the continuous prefix combine to make نمی‌?

The standard negative prefix is نـ (na- or ne-), and the continuous prefix is می (mi-). When you make a continuous verb negative, the negative prefix always takes the 'ne' sound and attaches directly to می, creating the single prefix block نمی‌ (ne-mi-).

Why doesn't نمی‌کرد have a personal ending at the end of it?

In all Farsi past tenses, the third-person singular (he/she/it) form is just the bare past stem without any extra personal ending. Since the subject here is وکیل (the lawyer), we just use the stem کرد (kard) along with its prefixes.