As part of our series of dissident profiles, Index looks at Nasrin Sotoudeh, the imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer who has made a career of defending political activists
If there is any case to sum up the oppressive cruelty of the Iranian regime when it comes to clamping down on the right to free speech and human rights, it is that of Nasrin Sotoudeh.
The award-winning human rights lawyer was arrested for a scarcely believable fifth time in April 2026, charged with “propaganda against the state” after criticising the actions of the Iranian government in relation to the war with the US and Israel and the state’s brutal suppression of protests. When released on bail a month later, she spoke out about the mistreatment she received at the hands of the Iranian authorities while in detention, describing being given heavy beatings, inedible food and existing in “inhumane conditions”.
Sotoudeh’s arrest was greeted with outrage around the world, invoking the ire of the global human rights community, who demanded the release of one of their most accomplished members. Upon her release, Sotoudeh thanked those who had supported her.
“I have gained my freedom thanks to those who have always cared about us political prisoners in Iran,” she stated in a social media post. “We have many friends all over the world, from Iranians to non-Iranians whose hearts ache for the plight of modern humans who are constantly forced to pay a price to live a normal and dignified life.”
The terrible irony of the situation is that if this had happened to someone else, Sotoudeh herself would have been the first port of call when looking for help, and she would no doubt have been one of the first to offer it.
Sotoudeh began practising law in 2003, after spending some time in her early career as a newspaper journalist writing about human rights violations. She worked on cases concerning children’s rights, representing juveniles sentenced to death or children facing domestic abuse, as well as cases involving women, ethnic minorities and religious minorities. Thus began a long, impressive career in fighting for human rights in Iran.
Her husband Reza Khandan, a graphic designer turned activist whom she met at a hiking group and married in 1995, confirmed that her intention was always to be on the front lines of the fight for the protection of human rights. “Even before she became a lawyer I could see how much she wanted to help everyone,” he said in the 2020 documentary Nasrin.
Sotoudeh was one of the first to join the Campaign for One Million Signatures, a movement launched by Iranian women in 2006 to collect signatures in support of changing laws that were discriminatory against women. Although the movement garnered international support and acclaim, it was heavily suppressed by the authorities in Iran, who arrested and jailed many of the activists taking part in the campaign. Sotoudeh represented several of the persecuted campaign members herself and soon found herself in the crosshairs of the state.
She was arrested for the first time in June 2008 while preparing to attend a gathering in Tehran to commemorate the National Day of Solidarity of Iranian Women. After representing several of the other women who were also arrested, she was put on trial herself in February 2009 for disturbing the public and disobeying the police, although she was never sentenced.
Refusing to be cowed by the experience, Sotoudeh continued to fight for women’s rights in the country, forming the Coalition of Women’s Rights Movement in the run up to the presidential election in 2009. This once more evoked the anger of the Iranian authorities, and she was arrested for the second time in 2010 on charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security. This time, her detention was longer and she was kept in solitary confinement and denied visits or phone calls to her family, leading her to go on hunger strike for several weeks. In January 2011, Sotoudeh was sentenced to 11 years in jail before being released in September 2013 along with ten other political prisoners.
Sotoudeh continued to speak out against human rights violations in Iran, representing political prisoners and activists including members of the Girls of Revolution Street group who publicly removed their hijabs to protest Iran’s compulsory hijab law. She appears in the 2015 film Taxi Tehran, a satirical documentary from the award-winning Iranian director Jafar Panahi, where she discusses the current political climate inside the country and the tactics used to persecute dissidents: “First they mount a political case, they beef it up with a morality charge, then they make your life hell,” she tells the filmmaker. “They make your best friends your enemies.”
