23 years in Prison and more to Come
Nasrin Sotudeh, an Iranian lawyer, publicized an unjustified case of imprisonment via social media while herself in prison. Sotudeh relayed information about the case to her husband during his visits. Shortly after, her husband posted the case on his Facebook page which went viral.
Sotudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, wrote:
“Soghra is the name of a woman who was imprisoned at the age of 13 for murder and has spent 23 years in jail. She has been sentenced to execution; even though she always denied the charge and wasn’t represented by a lawyer, she was taken to the execution room twice already. The guards of Rasht prison told Nasrin that when they received 13-year-old Soghra, she was like a baby doll with her bangs on her forehead. She was charged with another charge [not mentioned what in the text] in prison and received lashes for it.”
“The maximum jail time in countries that no longer practice execution, is 20 years. That means Soghra is still waiting for her execution while she has passed more time in prison than the replacement punishment.
The more awful fact is, if a women rights activist wasn’t imprisoned, no one might ever hear about Soghra. Who knows how many more Soghra’s are out there?” says Khandan.
As Khandan noted, Soghra is not the only case of injustice in Iranian prisons, Hamid Reza Biyabani, for example, a 38 year-old prisoner in Iran, committed suicide to end 14 years of an undetermined status in prison.
