Nasrin Sotoudeh’s Disbarment Court Session Cancelled

 In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Reza Khandan, Nasrin Sotoudeh’s husband, said that the second court session reviewing her disbarment was cancelled. “My wife’s second court session at the Tehran Bar Association was scheduled for Sunday, 18 September, but she was not transferred from prison to court, and the the court session was not held, naturally. Of course the prison authorities had previously informed the court officials that Ms. Sotoudeh would not be brought to court today, but I don’t know why. They just told me that the prison authorities have announced that Ms. Sotoudeh would not be transferred to the court session,” he said.

Following the inappropriate conduct of prison officers during Sotoudeh’s last visit with her family six weeks ago, Nasrin Sotoudeh stopped appearing at her weekly visitations to protest their mistreatment. Khandan told the Campaign that she had a short visit with her family this week. “Ms. Sotoudeh’s court session at the Bar Association was scheduled for this Sunday, which coincided with the Evin Prison visitation day. That’s why when we realized that she would not be brought to court, we went to Evin Prison quickly to see whether we could see her in the remaining visitation time. First they said she did not wish to come, but when she found out that the kids were with us and we had been to the court, she came and we were able to see her for 15 minutes after six weeks,” said Khandan. He also that in the six weeks since he last saw her, she had lost a lot of weight.

Reza Khandan told the Campaign that one of Sotoudeh’s lawyers has been arrested and another has left the country., “Unfortunately, Mr. [Abdolfattah] Soltani, the lawyer, was arrested a few days ago, and this is why we unaware of the status of Ms. Sotoudeh’s case. Ms. Parakand, her other lawyer, was under pressure and she chose to leave the country a while ago. Of course Ms. Sotoudeh has other lawyers, too, but since her case was forwarded to the Revolutionary Court, only Mr. Soltani and Ms. Parakand, and most recently only Mr. Soltani, knew about the case’s progress,” Khandan added.