Leading Iranian human rights lawyer detained in Tehran, daughter says

This 2023 photo provided by Mehraveh Khandan shows, from left, Nima Khandan, Mehraveh Khandan, Nasrin Sotoudeh and Reza Khandan in their home in Tehran. (Courtesy Mehraveh Khandan via AP, File)

BEIRUT — Leading Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was detained by Iranian intelligence agents at her house in Tehran overnight, her daughter said Thursday.

Prize-winning Nasrin Sotoudeh, 64, is renowned for defending activists, opposition politicians and women prosecuted for removing their headscarves. She has been imprisoned multiple times and is currently out on bail for health reasons.

Her husband, Reza Khandan, also a well-known activist, is currently imprisoned in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison.

Mehraveh Khandan, speaking to The Associated Press from Amsterdam, said she received messages from her family in Iran through an intermediary, confirming her mother’s arrest. Restrictions on communications and the internet imposed since January make contact with the outside world almost impossible.

News of Sotoudeh’s detention comes as Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on dissent and political activists even as the war with the U.S and Israel rages. Since the war began in Feb. 28, authorities have reportedly arrested hundreds, often for communicating with foreign media. Authorities have also stepped up executions of detained protesters, who were facing the death sentence. Rights groups have said the crackdown is meant to instill fear and deter new protests.

Days before her arrest, Sotoudeh gave an interview published on Monday to a Persian media outlet abroad in which she commented on the war, saying the Islamic Republic’s policies “have exposed us to death.” She also spoke out against the government crackdown on protests in January— the largest against the Islamic Republic in decades— which were met with a brutal crackdown.

Khandan said she is worried about her mother, who has a heart condition, because of possible U.S.-Israeli attacks on detention facilities and because “our regime became even more brutal after this war started.”

Sotoudeh’s arrest also comes after news that Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi may have suffered a heart attack.

Mohammadi’s French lawyer Chirinne Ardakani told AP Thursday that her legal team learned of Mohammadi’s condition during a brief prison visit last week.

“She appeared extremely emaciated, pale, weak, and had difficulty moving. In fact, she was even accompanied to the waiting room by a nurse. We learned from Narges Mohammadi that she had a heart attack on March 24th, that she was found unconscious in her cell, and that it was actually her fellow inmates who took her to the infirmary,” Ardakani said.

Besides the concern over her health, there were also airstrikes not too far from the Zanjan Prison in northwestern Iran where she is being held, raising concerns for her safety, the lawyer said.

Mohammadi, 53, a rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while in prison, was arrested in December during a visit to the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad and sentenced to seven more years in prison. Mohammadi’s health has been worsening.

In a brief call Thursday, Sotoudeh told her family she was detained by the Intelligence Ministry, the same agency that arrested her before, said Khandan.

Sotoudeh told her family to follow up on her arrest with prosecutors. There was no immediate word on the reason for her arrest. All communication devices in the house, including her father’s, were also confiscated, Khandan said.

Sotoudeh received the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Union in 2012. Her previous clients include Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and several activists arrested during the government repeated crackdown on protests.

Khandan said she is concerned that the news of the crackdown on dissent would be drowned out as the war rages.

“It is hard for our voice to be heard in this time,” Khandan said. “The regime had (some) limits before. They don’t have (them) anymore.”

Associated Press journalist Oleg Cetinic in Paris contributed reporting.

Sarah El Deeb, The Associated Press