Human rights

Radiofarda – Iran’s foreign ministry warned the UK on Tuesday that giving diplomatic protection to a British-Iranian mother jailed in Tehran would not make the situation “easier”, state news agency IRNA reported. Britain on Friday extended the status to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested in Tehran in 2016. “What is certain is that the British government’s move lacks goodwill and …

RFL/RE – Videos shared on social media recently have demonstrated the “shocking levels of abuse” women in Iran face from morality police and pro-government “thugs” seeking to enforce the country’s strict dress code, Amnesty International says. “Iran’s forced hijab laws are not only deeply degrading and discriminatory, they are also being used to justify violent assaults on women and girls …

VOA – Iran’s human rights record came under sharp criticism at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday, with a U.N. expert singling out Iran’s crackdown on dissent and practice of sentencing children to death. Presenting his first report to the Geneva-based council since taking office in July, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, cited what …

HRW – Draconian Sentence for Well-Known Activist The Iranian judiciary’s draconian sentence for a prominent human rights lawyer is an appalling travesty of justice, Human Rights Watch said today. Branch 28 of Tehran’s revolutionary court has reportedly sentenced Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been in prison since June 2018 serving a 5-year sentence, to an additional 33 years in prison and 148 …

Amnesty – A series of videos shared on social media in recent weeks have shed light on the daily harassment and violent attacks women in Iran face at the hands of morality police and pro-government vigilantes seeking to enforce the country’s forced hijab (veiling) laws, said Amnesty International. The videos show members of the public or plain-clothes morality police aggressively confronting or attacking …

Amnesty – The sentencing of prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and women’s rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh to 33 years in prison and 148 lashes in a new case against her is an outrageous injustice, said Amnesty International today.  The sentence, reported on her husband Reza Khandan’s Facebook page on 11 March, brings her total sentence after two grossly unfair trials …

Al-Monitor – Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and will receive 148 lashes, according to her husband, Reza Khandan. Khandan posted on Facebook that Sotoudeh was sentenced in two separate cases — the first one resulting in a five-year prison sentence and the second in a 33-year sentence. There had been conflicting reports about her case. Iranian …

Radiofarda – A verdict has been issued in the court case of a US navy veteran arrested in Iran last year on security and other charges, the official news agency IRNA reported Monday. “This case has both private and public plaintiffs… There are security charges in the case,” Gholamali Sadeghi, prosecutor for the city of Mashad, told IRNA, without disclosing …

Radiofarda – More than 100 Iranian civil and political activists have described the appointment of hardline cleric Ebrahim Raeesi as Iran’s Judiciary Chief a sign of Islamic Republic Leader Ali Khamenei’s obstinacy and lack of respect for public opinion. The activists characterized Khamenei’s behavior as “rewarding criminals, aggravating the sad condition of the family members of the victims” of mass …

RFL/RE – Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to seven years in prison, local media report. A judge at Tehran’s Revolutionary Court told the semiofficial ISNA news agency on March 11 that the prominent human rights defender had been sentenced to five years for “colluding against the system” and two years for “insulting” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali …