At Least Nine Defense Attorneys Sentenced to Prison Since 2018
June 23, 2020 – Two years after the prominent human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested and imprisoned in Tehran, the Iranian judiciary’s continuing prosecution of independent lawyers under manufactured charges is laying bare the state’s disregard for international standards of law and due process. Read more
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint partnership of FIDH and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), has received new information and requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Iran.
Mohammad Najafi is the Seventh Attorney to Be Sent to Prison in Last Six Months, Six Remain Behind Bars
October 30, 2018—Iran’s sentencing of attorney Mohammad Najafi to three years in prison and 74 lashes for “disturbing the state” and “publishing falsehoods” after he advocated for a young client who died under suspicious circumstances in an Iranian detention center is a flagrant violation of the right to counsel and a continuation of the unlawful assault on the legal profession in Iran that has left a half dozen attorneys behind bars for doing their job.
Seven Lawyers Now Behind Bars with More Summoned or Banned from Work
September 5, 2018—The arrest of three more lawyers in Iran, Payam Derafshan, Farrokh Forouzan and Hoda Amid, represents the continuing escalation of Iran’s assault against its own legal profession and a flagrant violation of these individuals’ basic rights to freedom of expression and due process, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said in a statement today.
07.12.2016 – Commentary By Hadi Ghaemi: There is a crackdown underway in Iran. But it is no longer just a crackdown on dissent. Rather it is an attempt to crush views or expressions that depart from the insular and rigid worldview of an increasingly small band of hard-liners.
22-04-2016-FIDH- Letter addressed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein
Mr. High Commissioner,
I am writing to request your urgent attention to the plight of Iranian prisoners of conscience and political prisoners, and in particular prisoners who are denied proper medical treatment.
July 3, 2014 – According to the information received, Mr. Hadi Esmaeilzadeh was recently informed of his sentencing on May 31, 2014 by Branch 15 of the Islamic Revolution Court to a total of four years of imprisonment, including three years for the charge of “assembly and collusion with intent to commit anti-security crimes” based on membership of “an illegal organisation” – i.e. the DHRC – and one year for “spreading propaganda against the State.”
