By Huiyu Yin
Nasrin Sotoudeh is a well-known lawyer and human rights
activist in Iran. Iranian security forces arrested her and several others on
their way back from a protest in October 2014. The protest was against a spate
of acid attacks targeting women in the central city of Esfahan. Authorities
released the others shortly after their arrest but detained Sotoudeh in an
Intelligence Ministry facility in Tehran for an additional seven hours and
threated to charge her with the crime of Moharebeh, or “enmity against God.”
This was not her first arrest. In 2010, Iran’s revolutionary
court sentenced her to six years in prison and a 10-year ban on practicing law.
Human
Rights Watch and other
international press believed that the national security charges against her
arose solely from her peaceful exercise of fundamental rights and zealous
defense of her clients, including many human rights activists. The Iranian Bar
Association’s disciplinary committee revoked her law license in 2014 to enforce
the revolutionary court’s conviction. Sotoudeh believed that the ban was
imposed under pressure from security, intelligence and judiciary officials.
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