Children of detained human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh were Harassed by Intelligence agents.
Nasrin Sotoudeh’s daughter was threatened to be deprived of visiting her mother if she did not observe the veil.
“The prosecutor has sent a letter to me and my mother warning that if we don’t observe the hijab, we won’t be able to have visitation,” Mehraveh Khandan said.
Protesting the prosecutor’s letter demanding the jailed human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to be fully draped in a hijab while on prison visit, she to refused to enter the visitor’s hall or speak to her relatives on the phone until her daughter is allowed to visit without being harassed about her hijab.
Sotoudeh also refused to sign a written pledge stating she would wear the head-to-toe veil, which only shows a woman’s face and hands.
On September 16, 2018 when Sotoudeh’s children were waiting to meet their mother for a visit at the prison, they were not called up, and Soutoudeh’s daughter, fourteen-year old Mehraveh Khandan, was admonished and threatened for not fully respecting the hijab law. This was while her covering was the same as in her previous meetings with her mother.
“An individual who introduced himself as the director-general of the visitors hall in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison threatened the fourteen-year old Mehraveh Khandan, telling her that if she did not fix her hijab, he would not allow her to enter the hall, according to a well informed source.
“After waiting in the visitation hall for half an hour, (my mother’s) cellmates told me that when she was asked to sign a pledge to fully observe the hijab, she objected and then protested by refusing to go to visitation, saying that she won’t be making phone calls, either,” Mehraveh Khandan added.
The prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been on hunger strike since September 6, warning that she would neither halt her strike nor go to the prison’s medical clinic for monitoring until her husband Reza Khandan is released from police custody unconditionally.
Reza Khandan was arrested on September 4, on charges of “spreading propaganda against the system” and “colluding to commit crimes against national security.” He has also been accused of “promoting the practice of appearing in public without a veil” because of his support for the Iranian women’s campaign against forced veiling (hijab).
