Nasrin Sotoudeh

In June 2018 she was again arrested, and on 12 March 2019 sentenced to jail in Tehran, after being charged with several national security-related offences. While a Tehran judge told the Islamic Republic News Agency she was imprisoned for seven years, it was reported by other sources that the maximum sentence included 10 years in prison and 148 lashes, along with six other verdicts and sentences totalling 38 years bundled together.

On 6 March 2019, she was convicted in absentia, after refusing to attend the trial before Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Court because she was unable to select her own counsel. She was charged with a number of offences, including being a member of a human rights organisation and stoking "corruption and prostitution".

Before the verdict had been announced, the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights, Kate Gilmore, had been allowed to visit Sotoudeh. The visit was the first in many years by UN human rights investigators. The UN investigator on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, raised Sotoudeh’s case at the UN human rights council in Geneva on 11 March, saying that she had been "reportedly convicted of charges relating to her work and could face a lengthy prison sentence”.

Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director at Amnesty said: “Jailing a human rights defender for her peaceful activities is abhorrent but the fact that the judge in Nasrin Sotoudeh’s case used his discretion to ensure that she stays locked up for more than is required under Iranian law compounds the outrageous injustice of her sentence”.

In April 2019 actor and activist Nazanin Boniadi was interviewed by CBC News Network anchor Natasha Fatah about female activists in Iran, including Sotoudeh. Boniadi said that Sotoudeh should be lauded and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and also spoke of the bad reputation of the prison, where people were regularly tortured. She also spoke of the lack of support worldwide for the ordinary people of Iran.

Sotoudeh was arrested again in June 2018. According to her lawyer, she was charged with espionage, dissemination of propaganda and disparaging the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei. She was given a five-year imprisonment for “acting against national security”.

On 22 August 2018, 60 members of the European Parliament called on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to forcefully work for Sotoudeh's "unconditional release."

Sotoudeh was released on 18 September 2013 along with ten other political prisoners, including opposition leader Mohsen Aminzadeh, days before an address by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the United Nations. No explanation was given for her early release.

On 26 October 2012, Sotoudeh was announced as a co-winner of the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament. She shared the award with Iranian film director Jafar Panahi. European Parliament President Martin Schulz called the pair "a woman and a man who have not been bowed by fear and intimidation and who have decided to put the fate of their country before their own". European Union High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton stated of the prize, "I am following the case of Nasrin Sotoudeh and other human rights defenders with great concern ... We will continue to campaign for the charges against them to be dropped. We look to Iran to respect the human rights obligations it has signed up to". Human rights defender and freelance journalist William Nicholas Gomes demanded Immediate and unconditional release of Sotoudeh in August 2018.

On 9 January 2011, Iranian authorities sentenced Sotoudeh to 11 years in jail for charges that include "activities against national security" and "propaganda against the regime." Additionally, she has been barred from practicing law and from leaving the country for 20 years. In mid-September 2011, an appeals court reduced Nasrin Sotoudeh's prison sentence to six years; her ban from working as a lawyer was reduced to ten years.

Sotoudeh was arrested in September 2010 on charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security and was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Evin Prison. In January 2011, Iranian authorities sentenced Sotoudeh to 11 years in prison, in addition to barring her from practising law and from leaving the country for 20 years. Later that year, an appeals court reduced her sentence to six years and her practice ban to ten years.

On 28 August 2010, Iranian authorities raided Sotoudeh's office. At the time, Sotoudeh was representing Zahra Bahrami, a Dutch-Iranian dual citizen charged with security offenses; it was unclear whether the raid was related to Bahrami. On 4 September 2010, Iranian authorities arrested Sotoudeh on charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security. The Washington Post described the arrest as "highlighting an intensifying crackdown on lawyers who defend influential opposition politicians, activists and journalists."

Sotoudeh's imprisonment was widely condemned in the international community. In October 2010, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Federation for Human Rights, the Iranian League for the Defence of Human Rights, the Union Internationale des Avocats and the World Organisation Against Torture joined Amnesty International in a joint statement denouncing Sotoudeh's arrest and calling for her immediate release. The US condemned what it called the "unjust and harsh verdict" against Sotoudeh, and called her "a strong voice for rule of law and justice in Iran". On 20 December 2010, Amnesty International held a day-long protest at the Iranian embassy in London to protest her imprisonment. In January 2011, the Law Society of England and Wales also issued a call for her release.

Nasrin Sotoudeh (also spelled Sotoodeh; Persian: نسرین ستوده ‎) is a human rights lawyer in Iran. She has represented imprisoned Iranian opposition activists and politicians following the disputed June 2009 Iranian presidential elections as well as prisoners sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were minors. Her clients have included journalist Isa Saharkhiz, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, and Heshmat Tabarzadi, the head of the banned opposition group National Democratic Front. She has also represented women arrested for appearing in public without a hijab, which is a punishable offence in Iran.

In 1995 at the age of 32 she took the Bar (Kanoon Vokala) exam and earned her lawyers credentials, and became one of the most active members of the law society. Sotoudeh's work has included defending abused children and mothers and working to protect abused children from returning to their abusive fathers. She believes that many abusers are ill or past victims of mistreatment themselves, and in need of professional care and medication. She hopes that the courts will make better use of child specialists and psychologists in verifying abuse cases to better protect innocent children.

Nasrin Sotoudeh was born in 1963 in a "religious, middle-class" Iranian family. She had hoped to study philosophy in college and ranked 53rd in the Iranian national university entrance exam but lacked high enough marks to get a place and ended up studying law at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. After completing her degree in international law from the university, Sotoudeh took and passed the bar exam successfully in 1995 but had to wait another eight years to be given her permit to practice law.