First published May 14, 2019.
Combined sentences and time to serve
Adding the terms announced for several counts can differ from the period legally enforceable. The distinction matters when describing the lawyer’s case.
What happened after 2019. Sotoudeh was released early on medical grounds in 2021. In October 2023 she was arrested at the funeral of Armita Geravand, a 17-year-old who had died after an incident with hijab enforcers on the Tehran metro, and was released on bail on November 15, 2023. She was arrested again at her home in Tehran on the night of April 1–2, 2026, while on medical leave from prison, and released on bail on May 13, 2026; Front Line Defenders reported that she then faced a new charge of “propaganda against the state”. Rights groups also called in 2026 for the release of her husband, Reza Khandan, mentioned above, who had himself been imprisoned. (Update, October 2026: on September 28, 2026 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe awarded Sotoudeh the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize; it described her as released on bail in May 2026, she sent a video statement from Tehran, and her daughter received the prize on her behalf (Council of Europe, September 2026).) Her current status may have changed since these reports.
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After two trials described by Amnesty International as “grossly unfair,” Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was reported sentenced to a combined 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.
Sotoudeh has dedicated her life to defending Iranian women prosecuted for removing their hijabs in public. She has been in the crosshairs of Iran’s theocratic government for years. Back in 2010, she was convicted of conspiring to harm state security and served half of a six-year sentence. In June 2018, she was rearrested on an array of dubious charges. Tried in secret, details of her ordeal have often come via her husband, Reza Khandan, who wrote of her new, much harsher sentence on Facebook.
Sotoudeh was ultimately charged with seven crimes and given the maximum sentence for all of them. Five additional years were added from a 2016 case in which she was convicted in absentia. The entire 38-year sentence was severe even by Iranian standards — a country often accused of human rights abuses, particularly involving women. Observers say it might signal a newly hardline approach to political dissent.
Critics from across the world decried the outcome of Sotoudeh’s case. Amnesty International said it was the harshest sentence documented against a human rights defender in Iran.
The same day that Sotoudeh was sentenced, the UN investigator on human rights in Iran held up her case as a sign of Iran’s increasingly brutal oppression of those that defend the rights of women.
Reference: Women in the World
Additional source: Amnesty International: June 2019 clarification of the sentences.
Amnesty’s later explanation separates the headline total from time to serve
The headline this article first carried (“sentenced to 38 years”) combined sentences from more than one case. In June 2019, Amnesty International explained that the March case carried a stated total of thirty-three years and six months, while the enforceable prison term in that case was twelve years under the applicable sentencing rules. That clarification does not lessen the organization’s criticism; it makes the account of the punishment more precise. This remains a historical report, not a statement of her current legal status.
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