Iranian human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh arrested

Iranian human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh arrested
Well-known Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh, who received the 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, has been arrested.

ranian lawyer, human rights activist and Sakharov Prize winner Nasrin Sotoudeh has been arrested, according to her husband. She was taken from her home to the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran on Wednesday, as her husband Reza Khandan posted on his Facebook page. The reason for her arrest was a five-year prison sentence, to which the human rights activist was sentenced in absentia. "I have no idea what the basis for this conviction is," Khandan wrote.

Because of alleged "propaganda against the establishment" and "attack on national security", the Sakharov Prize winner was sentenced by a Revolutionary Court to eleven years in prison in 2010. The verdict was later reduced to six years. During the protests against the presidential elections of 2009, Sotoudeh defended opposition activists and politicians who opposed the re-election of Ahmadinejad. Among them was Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi. Following the election of Hassan Rouhani as president, she was released prematurely in September 2013.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is fighting for the rights of women and children in Iran and is opposing the execution of minors. As a lawyer, she works mainly for dissidents. In recent months, she has, inter alia, the defense of two young women who had publicly protested against the headscarf ban and then imprisoned. Among them was 31-year-old Vida Movahed, who took off her headscarf last December in the center of the capital, Tehran, in protest against headscarves. The image of Movahed waving her headscarf on a stick became an icon and symbol of resistance in Iran.

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