Iranian women rights activists arrested

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian security forces on Sunday arrested around 30 women's rights activists rallying outside a Tehran court where a group of their fellow campaigners were on trial over a demonstration last year.

"My clients and other women who had gathered in front of the court were arrested," Nasrin Sotoodeh, the lawyer for the accused, was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

According to unofficial reports, around 30 people were detained, including some of the most prominent women's rights activists in Iran.

The protestors had gathered in front of the revolutionary court in solidarity with five women on trial over their roles in a demonstration which was broken up by police in June last year.

Nushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Shahla Entesari, Susan Tahmasebi and Fariba Davudi Mohajer were standing trial for organising an "unauthorised" rally to ask for equal rights for women.

It was not clear which of the accused were among those arrested.

Sotoodeh later told AFP that the arrested activists had been transferred to the notorious Evin prison in northern Tehran.

"The families of those (arrested) who do not have a problem have been told to bring in property documents to bail them out," the lawyer said. "But this does not apply to those who do have a problem."

Sotoodeh said that the authorities have still not officially said how many people were arrested and or released their names.

Seventy people, most of them women, were arrested at the protest last June when they called for improved rights and changes to laws discriminating against women.

Under Iranian law, married women have to go through a lengthy process to be granted a divorce, and the testimony of two women is equal to that of one man.

Rights groups claimed that some demonstrators at that protest were beaten by the police.

Those arrested in June were all subsequently released, although one detained protester, reformist ex-MP Ali-Akbar Musavi Khoini, was held in prison until October.

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BBC

Iran's authorities have arrested more than 32 women activists protesting outside a courthouse in Tehran.

The protesters were showing solidarity with five women on trial for organising a protest last June against laws they say discriminate against women.

The five have been charged with endangering national security, propaganda against the state and taking part in an illegal gathering.

US pressure group, Human Rights Watch, has urged an end to the prosecution.

It said the women had been exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

The five are organisers of a demonstration last June which was violently broken up by the police and led to the arrest of 70 people, many of them innocent bystanders.

'Intimidation'

The BBC's Frances Harrison, reporting from the demonstration, says almost all the leaders of Iran's women's movement were arrested.

The women held up banners outside the revolutionary court, saying: "We have the right to hold peaceful protests".

The aim of the women is to draw attention to discriminatory Islamic laws on polygamy and child custody that often cause great suffering to women, our correspondent says.

When the five women on trial left the court building they were arrested again, along with their lawyer.

Parveen Adalan, one of those on trial, said her lawyer had not yet seen any of the evidence against her, although she has been questioned five times by the intelligence agencies.

"They didn't give them our documents to read, so we don't know what's happening," she told the BBC.

One of the women demonstrators, Nahid Mirhaj, accused the police of trying to intimidate them.

She said the police chief was "using obscene words and describing us as 'misfits'".

Our correspondent says police and plain-clothes security men chased away journalists and onlookers and then loaded the women onto a curtained minibus and drove them away.

The women believe the authorities are trying to intimidate them to prevent any kind of protest during International Women's Day on 8 March.