{"id":19643,"date":"2023-10-31T00:15:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T00:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/iran-arrests-prominent-lawyer-at-funeral-of-metro-death-teen-the-express-tribune\/"},"modified":"2023-10-31T00:15:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T00:15:08","slug":"iran-arrests-prominent-lawyer-at-funeral-of-metro-death-teen-the-express-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/iran-arrests-prominent-lawyer-at-funeral-of-metro-death-teen-the-express-tribune\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran arrests prominent lawyer at funeral of metro death teen | The Express Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nTEHRAN:
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Iranian authorities have arrested a prominent lawyer and human rights defender as she attended the funeral of a teenage girl who died after a disputed metro incident, her husband said Monday.<\/p>\n

The arrest of 60-year-old Nasrin Sotoudeh took place Sunday in Tehran during the funeral of 17-year-old Armita Garawand, who died a day earlier after nearly a month in intensive care.<\/p>\n

Sotoudeh, who was awarded the European Parliament’s 2012 Sakharov prize for her human rights work, has been arrested several times in recent years.<\/p>\n

“My wife was arrested during the funeral of Armita Garawand along with others,” Reza Khandan, Sotoudeh’s husband, told AFP<\/em>, saying she was “violently beaten” during the arrest.<\/p>\n

The teenager had been taken to Tehran’s Fajr Hospital on October 1 after an incident on the metro which left her in a coma, with sharply diverging views over how she was injured.<\/p>\n

She died just over a year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, also a young Iranian Kurd, who was arrested by the morality police for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict women’s dress code in an incident that sparked mass protests.<\/p>\n

Local Fars news agency said Sotoudeh “had been arrested and handed over to judicial authorities” for “not wearing a headscarf” and “disturbing the society’s mental security.”<\/p>\n

Covering the neck and head in public has been compulsory for women since 1983, following Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.<\/p>\n

Read also: Iran sentences women journalists on charges over Amini protests<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Women have been increasingly flouting the Islamic republic’s strict dress code since months-long demonstrations which erupted in September last year following Amini’s death in custody.<\/p>\n

Amini had previously been arrested for allegedly violating the dress code.<\/p>\n

Sotoudeh herself was previously imprisoned in 2018 after defending a woman arrested for demonstrating against the compulsory headscarf in Iran.<\/p>\n

Then in 2019, she was sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of “encouraging corruption and debauchery.”<\/p>\n

Garawand’s case was first reported on October 3 by Kurdish-focused rights group Hengaw, which said she had been critically wounded during an incident on the Tehran metro involving Iran’s morality police.<\/p>\n

But authorities say she suffered a sudden drop in blood pressure and denied that any “physical or verbal altercations” had taken place.<\/p>\n

Metro surveillance footage, which had been broadcast on state television, showed the unveiled teenager being evacuated after apparently fainting in a carriage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n