| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |
| Iran human rights activist jugged for 11 years | |
| 2011-01-11 | |
| TEHRAN - An Iranian human rights lawyer who has worked with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, has been jailed for 11 years for actions deemed “detrimental to national security”, the activist’s lawyer said on Monday. 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 practising law for 20 years and given a 20-year ban on leaving the country,” Mahnaz Parakand, 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.
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. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |