A prominent lawyer and human rights activist from Iran has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes for representing Muslim women who removed their headscarves in public.

55-year-old Nasrin Sotoudeh is famous for fighting back at the Islamic Republic’s regulations that make it mandatory for women to wear headscarves in public.

For years, Nasrin has been supporting ‘revolutionary’ ideas that would free Iranian women of the oppression posed by the country’s government and society.

Last June, however, the brave woman got arrested and handed maximum sentence for all of her charges including spying, insulting Iran’s supreme leader and spreading propaganda.

Following the cruel verdict consisting of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes, the woman’s husband, Reza Khandan, shared her story on Facebook. A petition to ‘Free Nasrin Sotoudeh’ was also initiated.

Previously, in 2010, the lawyer was jailed for conspiring to damage state security and spreading propaganda, charges for which she served three years.

“A movement against the compulsory hijab erupted in Iran in 2017 when one woman staged a solo act of resistance, removing her headscarf and silently waving it on the end of a stick. Countless women across the country joined her, staging their own protests, becoming known as the ‘Girls of Revolution Street,’” the petition reads.

“In 2018, Nasrin took on defending women facing prosecution because of these protests. Now, Nasrin is separated from her husband and two children, and can’t carry out her important work as a human rights lawyer. Women should be able to choose what they wear, and lawyers should be able to defend their right to do so.

“This is the harshest sentence recorded against a human rights defender in Iran in recent years, suggesting that the authorities are stepping up their repression.”

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