On 1 June 2023, the lawyer of woman human rights defender Farzaneh Zilabi announced their intention to appeal the unjust sentence issued by Branch 4 of the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court. On 21 May 2023, the woman human rights defender was sentenced to one year and six months in prison on the charge of “propaganda against the state” and “insulting the supreme leader.” This charge comes in addition to a prior one-year sentence on similar charges.
Farzaneh Zilabi is a human rights lawyer who has represented the Syndicate of Workers of Haft Tappeh Cane Sugar Company (SWHTCSC), the prosecuted members of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations (ITTA), and the pensioner’s fund victims in Shush, Khuzestan, in southern Iran. She has also represented many individual labour rights defenders and members of workers’ unions, and has been outspoken about instances of torture reported by her clients.
2011 – Human rights attorney, political prisoner, and co-founder of Step-By-Step Abolition of the Death Penalty, Nasrin Sotoudeh received the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. #FreedomButton #IOpposetheMandatoryHijab #WomenLifeFreedom #womenofIran pic.twitter.com/lByNOTDon1
— nasrinfilm (@nasrinfilm) May 30, 2023
On 21 May 2023, Farzaneh Zilabi’s lawyer announced that the woman human rights defender had been sentenced to one year and six months in prison on the charge of “propaganda against the state” and “insulting the supreme leader.” While the authorities did not state the exact basis of these charges, they are believed to be reprisals against Farzaneh Zilabi’s advocacy and legal representation of union actors in the Khuzestan province.
This is not the first time Farzaneh Zilabi has been targeted for her legitimate human rights work. In September 2021, the woman human rights defender was sentenced by ??Branch 2 of the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court to one year in prison and a two-year travel ban on the charge of “propaganda activities against the state.”
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