{"id":1687,"date":"2020-12-03T12:37:55","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T12:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1687"},"modified":"2020-12-03T12:38:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T12:38:05","slug":"weak-and-ill-with-covid-19-she-must-continue-serving-her-12-years-behind-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1687","title":{"rendered":"Weak and Ill with COVID-19, She Must Continue Serving Her 12 Years Behind Bars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/iransos.com\/en\/photo\/2011\/n\/nasrin-sotoudeh-11.jpg\" \/>December 2, 2020\u2014The return of Nasrin Sotoudeh to Gharchak Prison,\u00a0reported\u00a0today, December 2, 2020, by her husband, is condemned in the strongest terms, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said in a statement today.<!--more-->\u201cNasrin Sotoudeh\u2019s return to prison is a travesty of justice that endangers her life and reflects the Iranian authorities\u2019 complete contempt for the rule of law,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, CHRI executive director.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sotoudeh\u2019s husband, Reza Khandan, reported that she had received a summons ordering her to return to Gharchak Prison. He\u00a0posted\u00a0the following message from Sotoudeh on Facebook:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Dear friends and human rights activists,<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>They told me to go back to prison and today I will return to prison, where I left behind hundreds of cellmates, a place where I left my heart behind. It\u2019s always this way. Under these circumstances, I don\u2019t like to talk about what it was like being unable to hug my children during these three weeks because of the coronavirus.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>But I do have a duty to declare my concern about Ahmadreza Djalali\u2019s situation and appeal to everyone who can muster support to pay attention to his case. Free Ahmadreza Djalali, today.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Nasrin Sotoudeh<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sotoudeh, who has been jailed multiple times for her peaceful human rights work as a defense attorney in Iran, has been in prison since she was arrested in June 2018 for \u201cencouraging prostitution\u201d for advocating against compulsory hijab.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On August 11, 2020, she began a hunger strike to protest the\u00a0situation of Iran\u2019s political prisoners, especially their exclusion from prisoner release programs aimed at stemming the tide of\u00a0COVID-19\u00a0in the country\u2019s prisons. She was hospitalized on September 19 as her condition deteriorated\u2014only to be\u00a0sent back to Evin prison\u00a0on September 23, despite her worsening health.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Khandan reported that during her hospitalization, Sotoudeh was\u00a0exposed\u00a0to guards who later tested positive for COVID-19. On October 20, she was\u00a0transferred\u00a0from Evin Prison to the notoriously harsh and dangerous\u00a0Gharchak Prison\u00a0(also spelled Qarchak), despite serious continuing cardiac and pulmonary issues that required her hospitalization.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">She was\u00a0released\u00a0on temporary furlough on November 7, 2020, and soon thereafter confirmed that she has tested positive for COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sotoudeh\u00a0is serving a 38-year sentence (12 years of which she must serve before becoming eligible for release) for defending basic civil and political liberties in Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December 2, 2020\u2014The return of Nasrin Sotoudeh to Gharchak Prison,\u00a0reported\u00a0today, December 2, 2020, by her husband, is condemned in the strongest terms, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[167],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-nasrin-sotoudeh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}