An Iranian human rights lawyer who defended women who removed their headscarves in public has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes for allegedly “spreading propaganda” and insulting Iran’s supreme leader.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, who had completed a three-year sentence for similar charges in 2010, found herself arrested again in June of 2018 for alleged crimes against Iran’s fundamentalist dictatorship.
Sotoudeh was the lawyer for many women who had protested Iran’s oppressive laws by removing their headscarves in public — a crime in that country.
The public only knows Sotoudeh’s story because her husband Reza Khandan shared it on Facebook
“Five years of prison for the first case, and 33 years with 148 lashes for the second,” Khandan wrote on Facebook.
A petition for her release has already gotten over 130,000 signatures.
This is the latest in Iran’s brutal crackdown on opposition. Another recent case involved two teenage boys, flogged and executed in secret after being sentenced in allegedly unfair trials.
“The Iranian authorities have once again proved that they are sickeningly prepared to put children to death, in flagrant disregard of international law,” said Philip Luther of Amnesty International.
Over 7,000 people were arrested in 2018 for dissent against Iran’s theocratic leadership, many of which we also tortured and died in police custody.
One more victim of the Iranian government, Shaparak Shajarizadeh, was sentenced to 20 years for protesting the country’s mandatory hijab laws.
In the wake of this increased oppression, the United States backed out of the Iran nuclear deal and increased sanctions to that country.
Canada, on the other hand, has lifted sanctions since 2015 and has considered reopening diplomatic relations with the Islamist regime.
The United States also declared Iran’s elite military force, the Revolutionary Guard to be a terrorist organization in May, given its record of attacks and terror activities across the middle east.
Meanwhile, Canadian parliament passed a motion in 2018 to do the same thing, but so far Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has failed to act on it.
Although they like to pride themselves as advocates of human rights, it seems the Trudeau government is failing to stand up against Iran’s Islamist dictatorship.
