The Human Rights Defenders Center Award was presented to the family of imprisoned lawyer Mohammad Najafi.
The Human Rights Defenders Association presented the "Human Rights Activist" award in 2019 to Mohammad Najafi, a lawyer and imprisoned human rights activist.
The Telegram channel of the Center for Human Rights Defenders announced on Thursday, December 11, that Seyyed Mohammad Seifzadeh, Abdolfattah Soltani, and Masoumeh Dehghan presented the award statuette to Mr. Najafi's family at the home of the imprisoned lawyer in Arak.
According to the report, these representatives, wishing for the release of Mohammad Najafi, praised the committed performance of lawyers like him, who refused to give up their professional duties despite the heavy pressure on lawyers in recent years.
Since 2007, the Center for Human Rights Defenders has been nominating one human rights activist as the winner of the "Human Rights Activist" award every year and presenting the Cyrus Cylinder statue to these winners on International Human Rights Day (December 10).
Recently, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe also presented its 2019 Human Rights Award to this lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Abdolfattah Soltani, and Amirsalar Davoudi.
This lawyer was released on April 28 of this year after serving his three-year sentence in Arak Prison, with a "pardon." However, just four days after his release, he was transferred to Arak Central Prison to serve his ten-year prison sentence in connection with the events of January 2017 and on charges of "collaborating with hostile states."
The US State Department has repeatedly and on various occasions condemned the violent confrontations and widespread repression of protesters and human rights activists in Iran, as well as the repeated and persistent violations of the rights of Iranian citizens by the ruling regime in that country.
Source: Voice of America
