Iran releases prize-winning rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh
Iranian authorities on Wednesday released the prize-winning rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh after she spent more than two weeks in prison, her husband said.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, 60, was arrested at the funeral on October 29 in Tehran of Armita Garawand, 17, who activists say was fatally beaten by the Tehran morality police.
Sotoudeh, who has spent much of the past decade in and out of prison serving a myriad of sentences in cases linked to her activism, was after her arrest moved to Qarchak women's prison outside Tehran and subsequently to Evin prison in the capital.
"Nasrin was released from prison a few hours ago after posting bail," her husband Reza Khandan wrote on X, formerly Twitter, posting a picture with his wife who was defiantly not wearing the headscarf obligatory for women in the Islamic republic.
Sotoudeh, who began a hunger strike after her arrest, has for years campaigned on some of the most sensitive issues in Iran. She won prizes including the 2012 Sakharov Prize bestowed by the European Parliament and the 2020 Right Livelihood award.
She has also won prominence thanks to appearances in film. She made a memorable cameo appearance as a passenger in Jafar Panahi's 2015 movie "Taxi Tehran", and was the subject of a warmly received 2020 documentary, "Nasrin".
(AFP)
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