Iran has banned its top human rights lawyer from practicing law

An Iranian court has banned Nasrin Sotoudeh, an award-winning human rights lawyer, from practicing her profession for three years, a year after having served half of a six-year sentence for spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security. The recipient of the 2012 Sakharov Prize – awarded each year to defenders of human rights – was arrested in 2010, and released shortly before the then newly elected President Hassan Rouhani spoke at the United Nations last September.

This ruling opens the way for the disqualification of other lawyers in the future.

Nasrin Sotoudeh

When Sotoudeh was released, she suspected that there was pressure to revoke her law license as additional punishment. Sotoudeh was among the few Iranian lawyers to take on high-profile rights and political cases, including juveniles facing the death penalty, before her arrest. While in jail, she staged two hunger strikes in protest of the conditions at Evin Prison and on a ban against seeing her son and daughter.

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