Nasrin Sotoudeh: prize-winning Iranian lawyer returned to jail

French lawyers voice alarm over Ms Sotoudeh's imprisonment despite her poor health

Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, pictured in 2013, has returned to prison after being released briefly for medical treatment. AFP

French lawyers' associations have expressed alarm over the continued detention of Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, after the prize-winning campaigner had to return to jail outside Tehran,  following a brief medical leave.

Ms Sotoudeh, a winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize and a 2020 laureate of the Right Livelihood Award, is serving a 12-year-jail term on charges rejected as absurd by supporters.

Her husband, Reza Khandan, wrote on his social media channels that she had been allowed out of jail for medical leave on January 8 but then returned to Qarchak women's prison on January 20.

While on medical leave she had an angiography for a heart condition in Tehran, he said.

Ms Sotoudeh, 57, was arrested in 2018 on charges of collusion and propaganda against Iran’s rulers and was sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Under the law she must serve at least 12 years.

She was taken to hospital in mid-September, a month after launching a hunger strike seeking better prison conditions and the release of political prisoners amid the Covid-19 pandemic. She tested positive for the virus after her release.

In a joint statement, all six lawyers' associations in France said Ms Sotoudeh had been returned to jail "under conditions that do not allow her full recovery".

They urged Iran "to end all persecutions against lawyers, to release them without delay and unconditionally and, at the very least, to assure them conditions of detention that are dignified and respect Iran's international commitments".

Echoing activists' concerns over the conditions at Qarchak jail, it added she was serving her sentence "in an overcrowded and unsanitary institution, despite serious health problems directly putting her life in danger".

There has been growing international concern about Ms Sotoudeh, who was jailed after defending a woman arrested for protesting against the requirement for Iranian women to wear the hijab.

She has shown no fear in taking on the most sensitive cases – including those of young men sentenced to death for crimes committed while minors.

A major new documentary about her work, Nasrin, directed by American filmmaker Jeff Kaufman and partly shot in secret inside Iran, has sought to increase awareness of her plight.