{"id":10570,"date":"2018-06-15T12:41:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T16:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=10570"},"modified":"2018-06-15T12:41:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T16:41:49","slug":"amnesty-international-urges-iran-regime-to-immediately-release-human-rights-lawyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/10570\/","title":{"rendered":"Amnesty International Urges Iran Regime To Immediately Release Human Rights Lawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 13, the human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested in her home in Tehran and transferred to the prosecutor\u2019s office of Evin prison, according to her husband, Reza Khandan.<\/p>\n

Sotoudeh was told she was arrested to serve a five-year prison sentence, said Khandan, but neither he nor his wife knew anything about this sentence.<\/p>\n

The same day, Amnesty International\u00a0issued a statement<\/a>\u00a0calling for Iranian authorities to immediately release Nasrin Sotoudeh. The statement said, \u201cWe call on the Iranian authorities to release Nasrin Sotoudeh immediately and unconditionally.<\/p>\n

Any action short of this must be unreservedly condemned by the international community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement also claims, \u201cIn recent weeks, Nasrin Sotoudeh has spoken out against the application of a Note to Article 48 of Iran\u2019s 2015 Code of Criminal Procedure. The Note to Article 48 denies individuals facing some offenses, including those related to national security, the right to access an independent lawyer of their own choosing during the investigation of their charges. Instead, individuals can only select from a roster of pre-approved lawyers chosen by the Head of the Judiciary.<\/p>\n

The Head of the Judiciary issued a list with only 20 people pre-approved for Tehran province.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International\u2019s Middle East and North Africa Program, stated, \u201cPermitting only lawyers who are pre-approved to defend individuals accused of \u2018security\u2019 offences \u2013 who often include human rights defenders \u2013 completely undermines the right of detainees to a lawyer of their own choosing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nasrin Sotoudeh<\/a>\u00a0recently represented Narges Hosseini, who was prosecuted for peacefully protesting against compulsory veiling in Iran earlier this year. Since the December \/ January protests this year, dozens of women have been violently attacked and arrested for peacefully protesting against compulsory veiling.<\/p>\n

Previously, in September of 2010, Sotoudeh was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of \u201cspreading propaganda against the system\u201d and \u201cgathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security\u201d for her work \u2014 defending prisoners of conscience and juvenile offenders sentenced to death. She was awarded the Sakharov Prize for her human rights work in 2012 while in prison. She received a pardon, and was released in September of 2013.<\/p>\n

Despite attempts by the Iranian authorities to limit her work, she persisted in her work, even while having many of her requests to represent individuals detained for political reasons rejected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 13, the human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested in her home in Tehran and transferred to the prosecutor\u2019s office of Evin prison, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10573,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570\/revisions\/10573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}