Nasrin Sotoudeh on the front page of the Times

Persian2English – Prominent Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh is on the front page of today’s issue of the Times, with the title, “The lawyer who was jailed for daring to defend freedom.”

According to HRANA, yesterday, branch 54 of the Tehran Appeals Court reduced Nasrin Sotoudeh’s sentence to six years in prison and reduced the ban from practising law to ten years. The sentence was issued to one of Nasrin Sotoudeh’s lawyers, Mina Jafari.

Last year Judge PirAbassi from branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court had sentenced Nasrin Sotoudeh to 11 years in prison, banned her from practising law and leaving the country for 20 years.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is held in Evin prison’s women’s ward. Due to the abuse she and her family have endured by the Iranian authorities, she has refused to attend the last few family cabin visits. She has stated that she will continue to not attend the visits until the situation improves.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is the recipient of the 2011 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. In 2008, she was awarded the Human Rights prize by the International Committee on Human Rights.

She was arrested on September 4, 2010 and spent long periods of time in solitary confinement. She has also spent long durations on hunger strike since her incarceration.

Nasrin Sotoudeh has committed no justifiable crime. The Iranian authorities have demonstrated that they are threatened by the lawyer’s defense of her clients, who are mainly human rights activists arrested and abused following the June 2009 Presidential election.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is a member of the Defenders of Human Rights, the One Million Signatures Campaign to Change Discriminatory Laws Against Women, and the Society for Protecting the Rights of the Child.