Shadi Sadr

As a practicing lawyer, Shadi Sadr has successfully defended several women activists and journalists in court, who had been sentenced to execution. She is one of the Iranians who have campaigned to eradicate the practice of capital punishment by stoning, particularly of women, in a campaign known as Stop Stoning Forever. This campaign is one of several launched by Women's Field, a women's rights group of which Sadr was a member. This chapter of Sadr’s life has been portrayed in the documentary Women in Shroud which were shown in international human rights film festival all over the world.

Shadi Sadr served as a member of the panel of judges for the 2015 International People’s Tribunal (IPT)1965 on the crimes occurred in Indonesia and the 2017 People's Tribunal on Myanmar.

In 2010, with Shadi Amin, Shadi Sadr co-founded a new organisation Justice for Iran (JFI) which aims to address and eradicate the practice of impunity that empowers officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran to perpetrate widespread human right violations against their citizens and to hold them accountable for their actions.

On May 17, 2010, she was convicted in absentia in a Tehran Revolutionary court of “acting against national security and harming public order” and was sentenced to six years in prison with 74 lashes.

She worked actively as a human rights lawyer in Iran until 2009, as well as finding and directing Raahi, a legal advice centre for vulnerable women. In a surge of repression against civil society in 2007, the Iranian authorities closed down Raahi. Sadr also established Women In Iran in 2002, a website dedicated to women's rights activists. She was also a founding member of the feminist group, Women’s Field (Meydaan-e-Zanan) which initiated several campaigns including a campaign to remove the ban on women to enter the stadiums. While in Iran, she represented several women sentenced to death by stoning and hanging and as a result of her extensive activities, was imprisoned on various occasions prior to her exile to Europe in 2009 where she co-founded the human rights organisation, Justice for Iran.

Following the 2003 Bam earthquake, she helped organise a relief effort to collect food and supplies for women and children in the area of Bam. Sadr was the defense lawyer of several human rights defenders, including Shiva Nazar Ahari, a member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters, who was arrested on 14 June 2009.

On 17 July 2009, Shadi Sadr was beaten by plainclothes militiamen and taken away as she headed toward Tehran University for participating in one of the post-2009 Presidential election protest. She was walking on Keshavarz Boulevard with several other female activists when individuals in civilian dress approached and refused to identify themselves or justify their actions before forcing her into a waiting car. After she had briefly escaped, her companions were restrained as she was beaten and forced back into the car. It then took her to an unknown location. She was released 11 days later on July 28, 2009.

Shadi Sadr was one of 33 women arrested in March 2007 after gathering outside a Tehran courtroom to protest peacefully against the trial of five women accused of “propaganda against the system”, “acting against national security” and “participating in an illegal demonstration” in connection with a 12 June 2006 demonstration in support of women's rights. Sadr was held for fifteen days in Evin Prison before being freed on bail.

Sadr holds a bachelor's degree in law and a master's degree in international law, both attained from Tehran University (1999). Even before starting at university, she had been working as a journalist for youth magazines as well as several journals and newspapers.

Shadi Sadr (Persian: شادی صدر ‎; born 1974) is an Iranian lawyer, Human Rights advocate, essayist and journalist. She co-founded Justice for Iran (JFI) in 2010 and is currently the Executive Director of the NGO. She has published and lectured worldwide.