Iran human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh jailed

Nasrin Sotoudeh has worked with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

She has been sentenced to 11 years in jail in Iran for actions deemed “detrimental to national security”.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has worked to defend people accused of political crimes, was arrested in September and charged with undermining national security.

“My client has been handed an 11-year compulsory prison term, banned from practicing law for 20 years and given a 20-year ban on leaving the country,” Mahnaz Parakandeh, Sotoudeh’s attorney, told Reuters by telephone.

She was convicted of taking “hostile actions”, involvement in propaganda activities and colluding against national security, said the lawyer.

“Nasrin Sotoudeh has spoken openly about the failings of Iran’s justice system. Now she is a victim of those failings.” Kate Allen, Amnesty International

Sotoudeh was also found guilty of being a member of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, a banned rights association founded by Nobel laureate Ebadi.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said: “Nasrin Sotoudeh has spoken openly about the failings of Iran’s justice system.

“Now she is a victim of those failings. Five years of her eleven-year sentence are for membership of the banned Centre for Human Rights Defenders, even though she is not a member of the organisation.

“Her husband, who has also been summoned for questioning, is seriously concerned for Nasrin’s health – he saw her last week and while her spirits were strong, she apparently looked very week physically.

“These cases show the extent to which the Iranian authorities will turn on their own citizens in order to stifle perceived dissent.”

Protest

Shortly after her detention, Sotoudeh, a mother of two, went on a hunger strike, declining all liquids and food. She stopped the protest in early November.

The reformist website Kaleme quoted Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, as saying that he had expected a much lighter one. “We will have 20 days to appeal,” he said.

Khandan said he and his wife’s lawyer had also been summoned to court. “In the written summons the term ‘accused’ was used against me. In previous summons I had to defend myself for talking to the press,” he said.

Since Iran’s 2009 presidential election hundreds of reformists have been detained and put on trial in a crackdown on the pro-reform opposition.

The vote was followed by street protests, the most serious unrest since the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979. The state quashed the turmoil, blaming it on “seditionists” backed by its foreign enemies.

Mass detentions and trials followed the vote and two people were executed. The opposition says the vote was rigged but the authorities have strongly denied allegations of fraud.

Photographs on this page courtesy of Photoforchange.net, photographer Raha Askarizadeh