Adin Lubis
Amnesty International said it is an outrageous injustice
Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, said: “Whenever the authorities think that keeping my wife in prison is too costly for them – meaning that the public is becoming sensitive about it – they release her, and whenever they think she’s becoming harmful for them outside jail, they take her back in.”
Between 2010 and 2013, Sotoudeh was a former political prisoner – she was jailed on the charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security. The lawyer denied those charges and, while in prison, the European Parliament gave her the Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought for her work, representing human rights activists.
Her case then caused an international outcry, during which the US and the human rights group Amnesty International criticized Iran. Sotoudeh was freed in September 2013 ahead of a visit to the United Nations by the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, soon after he was swept into office in part on promises of liberal reforms.
Sotoudeh is now being held in Tehran’s Evin prison alongside at least 16 other women who are also held on the basis of security charges, including British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Narges Mohammadi, who has recently been transferred to hospital due to her poor health condition. There is an international outrage about her imprisonment, as her only crime seems to be that she stands up for women’s rights.
The organic launched a petition calling for Sotoudeh’s release.
