BREAKING NEWS

Iranian human rights lawyer stages protest over ban from practice

By REUTERS

OCTOBER 22, 2014 16:05

DUBAI - Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh said on Wednesday she would protest outside the Iranian Bar Association offices in Tehran until it reversed a decision to ban her from practicing law for three years.

Sotoudeh was sentenced to six years in jail in 2010 and banned from practice after being convicted of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security. Her case came to international attention in 2012 when she embarked on a 50-day hunger strike against a travel ban on her daughter.

The United States and human rights campaigners like Amnesty International criticized the Islamic Republic over the case and she was freed in September 2013 ahead of a visit to the United Nations by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, soon after he swept to election in part on promises of liberal reforms at home.

"From the first day of my arrest four years ago, my interrogator said that he would use all of his powers to try to stop me from practicing," Sotoudeh told Reuters during her second day of protest outside the Bar Association in Tehran.

"Now, after four years, I think that my interrogator, with the help of my colleagues to certify it, was successful in achieving his goal," she said, holding up a placard reading "Work Rights, Dissident Rights".

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