An Iranian human rights lawyer whose jailing spurred an international outcry is now going on a hunger strike, frustrated by restrictions on her family, her husband said Thursday.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, 49, was convicted last year of acting against national security and spreading propaganda against the government. The attorney, known for defending Iranian dissidents, had earlier angered the judiciary by denouncing the unannounced execution of one of her clients, whom she was allowed to meet only briefly.
She was sentenced last year to 11 years in jail and banned from practicing law for 20 years, to the outrage of fellow activists and global human rights groups. At the time, the U.S. State Department decried the sentence as an unjust and harsh attempt to silence defenders of democracy and human rights in the country. Amnesty International calls her a “prisoner of conscience.”
Her sentence has since been commuted to six years and she will be allowed to begin practicing law again after a decade. But while Sotoudeh now faces fewer years behind bars, other restrictions have been imposed on her and her family as she passes the days in Evin Prison in Tehran.
This summer, husband Reza Khandan and their daughter were forbidden from leaving the country. Sotoudeh has since been barred from hugging him and her two children on prison visits, her husband says. Instead, the family must communicate by phone behind a clear barrier.
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