Nasrin Sotoudeh
Age: 63
Activism/rights: Human rights lawyer
Status: Released on bail
Judicial status: 27 years’ imprisonment
Violations: Arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of a fair trial and due process; prolonged solitary confinement; denial of medical care; denial of access to a lawyer; harassment of family members; judicial harassment
Nasrin Sotoudeh is a lawyer, a member of the Defenders of Human Rights Association of Iran, and a board member of the Society for Protecting the Rights of the Child. She has represented dozens of cases involving human rights activists, children who are victims of abuse, children at risk of execution, and the “Girls of Revolution Street”. She is also a member of Legam: Step-by-Step Abolition of the Death Penalty campaign, recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Robert Badinter Prize for the fight against the death penalty. She was previously jailed from August 2010 to September 2013 for her professional and human rights activities. Nasrin was rearrested on 13 June 2018 and sentenced to five years in prison in absentia on the charge of “concealing a spy” which was later changed to “assembly and collusion against national security”. In March 2019, in a separate case involving seven charges, she was sentenced to 33 years and six months’ imprisonment and 148 lashes. One of the charges against her was “promoting corruption and prostitution” in relation to her legal representation of the Girls of Revolution Street. Behind bars, Nasrin continued to fight for civil rights, including the release of political prisoners. Her prison sentence was later reduced to a total of 27 years following international pressure, and the punishment of lashes was removed.
Despite the deterioration of her physical condition and medical specialists’ recommendations for cardiac examinations and angiography, on 20 October 2020 she was transferred to Qarchak Prison under the pretext of being taken to hospital.
For years, Nasrin and her family were under pressure. Her daughter, Mehraveh Khandan, was arrested in 2020, and the bank accounts of Nasrin and her husband, Reza Khandan, were frozen. Mehraveh was ultimately forced to leave Iran due to pressure on the family. In another incident, her son, Nima, was beaten and arrested by prison officers while visiting his father in prison.
Due to her critical health condition, she was granted medical furlough from prison on 23 July 2021. However, on 30 October 2023, during the funeral of Armita Garavand—a schoolgirl who died under suspicious circumstances in the Tehran metro—she was arrested while attempting to prevent security forces from attacking a justice-seeking mother.⁷³ Nasrin was subjected to physical torture at the Tehran Police Security detention centre and transferred first to Qarchak Prison and then to Evin Prison. The state-affiliated Fars News Agency cited the reason for her arrest as “removing her hijab and disrupting the psychological security of society”. She was released on bail on 15 November 2023.
In October 2025, Nasrin reported that she has been denied visits with her husband, Reza Khandan, in prison due to her refusal to comply with compulsory hijab regulations.
On 1 April 2026, Nasrin was arrested at her home and held incommunicado for 17 days. In a brief phone call to her family, Nasrin said she was being held in one of the Ministry of Intelligence detention centres. She was ultimately released on bail on 13 May 2026.