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Iran: Woman jailed for wanting to watch volleyball deprived of visiting her lawyer

ghoncheh-ghavami

NCRI – The British Iranian woman – Ghoncheh Ghavami – jailed in Tehran’s Evin prison since June for trying to watch men’s volleyball has been deprived of visiting her lawyer.

Despite the fact that the court ruling the case allows the defendant to meet with her lawyer, officers are disallowing visits. As her lawyer puts it, it “seems like the officers’ authority surpasses that of the court.”

Mrs. Ghavami’s lawyer was quoted by state-run news agency ISNA as saying: “despite the fact that a court session on October 19 was held on the case and based on the law the verdict should have been issued within a week maximum, we have not received one.”

“They told us the ruling is in the process of being typed,” he said.

Ghavami’s lawyer said her client has been charged with “propaganda against the system [Iranian regime]” and could receive a three to twelve month sentence.

“Ghoncheh Ghavami, a 25-year-old Iranian-British national, has been held in Tehran’s Evin Prison since 30 June, largely in solitary confinement without access to her lawyer. She is a prisoner of conscience, arrested solely for taking part in a peaceful protest against the ban on women attending Volleyball World League matches in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium,” Amnesty International said in an Urgent Action on September 12 calling for her release.

The statement added: “On 30 June, plainclothes agents went with her to her house to confiscate her laptop and books and then took her to Section 2A of Evin Prison, where she was kept in solitary confinement, without access to her family or lawyer for 41 days.”

“She was subsequently transferred to a cell shared with another inmate. Ghoncheh Ghavami has said that during her prolonged solitary confinement, the interrogators put her under psychological pressure, threatening to move her to Gharchak Prison in the county of Varamin, Tehran Province, where prisoners convicted of serious criminal offences are held in dismal conditions, and telling her that she ‘would not walk out of prison alive’.”