From Arrests to High-Profile Cases
In the months following the nationwide protests of 2025, a new wave of arrests, summonses, criminal prosecutions, and professional restrictions targeted lawyers across Iran. From Shiraz and Mashhad to Tehran, Rasht, Tabriz, Ahvaz, Ilam, Jiroft, and Yazd, attorneys representing protesters, political prisoners, civil society activists, justice-seeking families, and victims of human rights violations increasingly became the subjects of security-related cases themselves.
A review of documented cases between January 2024 and June 2026 indicates that the repression of independent lawyers has evolved beyond the prosecution of a small number of prominent attorneys. It has become a structural policy aimed at controlling the right to legal defense. This policy advances through three parallel mechanisms: the exclusion of independent lawyers from political and security-related cases, the weakening of the independence of the Bar Association, and restrictions on the right to choose legal counsel through Article 48 of Iran’s Code of Criminal Procedure.
Independent estimates indicate that more than 50,000 individuals were detained during the nationwide protests of 2025. At the same time, United Nations human rights experts and mechanisms expressed concern regarding widespread arbitrary arrests, denial of access to legal counsel, prolonged detention in security facilities, and reports of enforced disappearances. In such circumstances, access to independent legal representation has become one of the most important safeguards for the protection of detainees’ fundamental rights.
Through an examination of the cases of Mohammad Najafi, Taher Naghavi, Mohammadreza Faghihi, Khosrow Alikordi, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Shima Ghoosheh, Bahar Sahraeian, Elham Zeraatpisheh, and dozens of other lawyers, this report demonstrates that the repression of independent legal professionals has become an integral component of the broader architecture of political repression in Iran. The objective is not merely to punish individual lawyers. Rather, it is to restrict the possibility of independent legal defense in political and security-related cases and to leave society without effective legal protection at moments when citizens need it most.
