25 March 2020 :

Human rights lawyer Soheila Hejab sentenced to 18 years in prison. Human rights lawyer Soheila Hejab was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Wednesday, March 18, 2020, by the 28th Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran presided by Mohammad Moghisseh. Hejab is from Kermanshah. She was arrested at home on June 6, 2020, by agents of the IRGC Intelligence. On January 28, 2020, she was brutalized by prison guards at Evin Prison. Due to the injuries sustained, she was taken to Taleghani Hospital but returned without any medical examinations. Ms. Hejab was temporarily released from Evin Prison on March 14 on a heavy bail of three billion tomans until her trial is held. This lawyer and civil rights activist wrote a letter from prison on January 13, 2020, on the incidents which took place during the protests in November 2019 and January 2020. Addressing the regime’s officials, she said: “The oppressive regime must be toppled,” and “when a pen does not write about injustices, it must be broken.” In this letter, she wrote about the people killed in the protests: “I am thinking of Iran whose indescribable pain is stuck in my throat. The pain of those who were killed in November, the overturning of the bus, the downing of (the Ukrainian passenger) airliner, the floods in Sistan and Baluchestan, and thousands of other harrowing disasters which happen one after the other. Thanks to the policies of incompetent rulers, and their failure to use preventive scientific measures and advanced equipment, our patient compatriots are overwhelmed with sorrow and grief.”