Nasrin Sotoudeh: I Will Not Participate in Any Staged or Prescribed Trial

Nasrin Sotoudeh has described her charges as “baseless and false” and announced that she will not appear in any court for her defense. She has characterized the legal proceedings as “a clear violation of the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a violation of her own human rights.”

Nasrin Sotoudeh has informed the Zanjan prosecutor and the Tehran prosecutor in writing that she will not appear in any court for her defense, as she considers their procedures to be “a clear violation of the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a violation of her own human rights and punishable.”

According to a report by the “Human Rights Defenders Center,” the prosecutor of Branch 2 of the Zanjan court visited the women’s ward of Zanjan Prison on April 6 to take Ms. Sotoudeh’s final statement, but the prisoner refused to cooperate with the “staged and prescribed court.”

Nasrin Sotoudeh stated that “so far I have been sentenced to 23 years in prison by three branches of the Islamic Revolution Court.” She added: “I declare that I will not appear in the prescribed and staged courts of the judiciary, and I accept all my activities within Evin Prison, holding sessions, taking positions, and statements I have made over the past years from prison, and I will pay the price for it in this exile and in the inhumane conditions imposed on me. I consider the actions of the Ministry of Intelligence under Mr. Rouhani, the management of Evin Prison, and the prison organization to be malicious, illegal, and contrary to human ethics, and I will not remain silent in the face of it.”

According to the Human Rights Defenders Center, Nasrin Sotoudeh is prohibited from leaving the women’s ward of Zanjan Prison even in the presence of security forces and under custody, such that the judicial and administrative procedures that should be carried out in the prosecutor’s branches are being conducted with the dispatch of the prosecutor and judicial officials to the women’s ward and inside the prison.

Following Nasrin Sotoudeh’s transfer to Zanjan Prison, six new charges were filed against her in two separate cases in March 2020.

Security officials have stated that the two new cases are related to incidents during her detention period. The Zanjan prosecutor’s office has introduced “publication of political statements, holding educational classes, and protest sit-ins in the women’s ward” as evidence for the new charges.

The prosecutor has announced that both cases belong to Tehran and that the authority to take the final statement has been delegated to the Zanjan prosecutor’s office.

“Tyrannical Imprisonment”

Nasrin Sotoudeh, vice president and spokesperson for the Human Rights Defenders Center, who has been in prison since June 5, 2015, was previously sentenced to 16 years in prison on three charges.

Following Ms. Sotoudeh’s protest sit-in at Evin Prison in solidarity with nationwide protests in November 2019, she was transferred to Zanjan Prison starting December 2019, and additional charges were brought against her in two separate new cases.

The reason for this transfer was Ms. Sotoudeh’s sit-in and several other prisoners in solidarity with flood and earthquake victims and November protests at the Evin Prison office. Evin authorities made the protesters visitors’ ban and deprived them of their right to phone contact with their families.

In a letter released on the anniversary of her imprisonment, Nasrin Sotoudeh spoke of “tyrannical imprisonment among the victims of poverty, corruption, and patriarchal laws.”

Nasrin Sotoudeh, mother of two children, suffers from pulmonary embolism and muscle paralysis, and has been deprived of telephone contact with her children for several months.

Before the letter was released, Ms. Sotoudeh’s lawyer announced that her conditional release had been rejected and that she was being held, contrary to the principle of separation of crimes, alongside dangerous prisoners.

Ezzat Bahregan, Nasrin Sotoudeh’s mother, also wrote a letter to the head of the judiciary, criticizing the inhumane conditions of Zanjan Prison, saying: “My daughter contracted multiple diseases in solitary cells and underwent three major surgeries in the past five years of imprisonment, and during these years has been on furlough only once for three days.”

Source: DW