Nasrin Sotoudeh Transferred to Qarchak Prison

Human rights lawyer and activist Nasrin Sotoudeh has been transferred from Evin to Qarchak Prison.

Sotoudeh’s husband Reza Khandan tweeted on October 20 that instead of being taken to a hospital for medical treatment, she had been taken to Qarchak outside Tehran, Iran Human Rights reports.

“Today, the officers of the public ward of Evin Prison called Nasrin to get ready to send her to the hospital," Khandan wrote. "But after leaving the prison, she was transferred directly to Qarchak Prison. According to (medical) experts, she should have been taken to the hospital for immediate heart examinations and angiographic surgery.”

Jailed Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was also transferred to Qarchak in July after appealing to authorities to take her out of a temporary detention cell overseen by the Revolutionary Guards. Instead of transferring her to a common ward as she asked, they took her to Qarchak, where she was put on a ward with dangerous criminals.

Sotoudeh was arrested in 2018 and sentenced in March 2019 to at least 33 years; if authorities insist that she face punishment for the full set of charges against her, which include “conspiracy against national security”, “spreading lies”, and “disturbing public opinion,” she could serve 38 years.   

She was on hunger strike in August and September in protest against the terrible conditions in Evin Prison and to call for the release of political prisoners. In September, two of her cellmates were so worried about Sotoudeh's deteriorating health that they appealed to the head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raeesi, to intervene in her case to save her life.

She has defended human rights activists campaigning for women’s rights and against the death penalty, as well as opposition activists and protesters.

Sotoudeh previously served a three-year prison sentence for her human rights work, from 2010 to 2013.

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Nasrin Sotoudeh’s Cellmates Appeal to Judiciary to Save Her Life