Pictured! Iranian Lawyer Who Protested Country’s Mandatory Head Scarf Is Sentenced To 38 Years In Prison & 148 Lashes

A prominent Iranian lawyer who defended women arrested for protesting the country’s mandatory head scarf law has been sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes, according to her husband.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been imprisoned since being taken from her home in June, is already serving a five-year sentence.

The 55-year-old human rights lawyer was sentenced to an additional 33 years — and the 148 lashes — after being convicted of several more national security crimes this month, her husband, Reza Khandan, wrote on Facebook.


But the semiofficial Islamic Republic News Agency reported that a judge at Tehran’s Revolutionary Court said Monday that in addition to the five years of Sotoudeh’s earlier sentence for “colluding against the system,” she was sentenced to two years for “insulting” supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The report did not clarify which cases the judge spoke of, but a rights group said one appeared to be the 2015 conviction.

Sotoudeh told her husband in a brief phone call from prison that she was informed she faces 38 years and the lashes, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Khandan told the New York-based advocacy group that it is unclear what additional charges Sotoudeh had been convicted of and that his wife had not received the verdict in writing.

“I don’t know how many years she got for each of the charges because my conversation with Nasrin only lasted a few minutes and we didn’t get to the details,” Khandan said, according to a statement on the group’s website.

“I only know that the biggest sentence was 12 years for [encouraging] ‘corruption and prostitution,’” he said, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Hadi Ghaemi, the center’s executive director, said lashing is an unusual sentence for someone charged in a security case. He said it showed Iran is escalating its crackdown on human rights defenders.