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Iran’s jailing of woman for volleyball protest is ‘appalling’: Amnesty International

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 sentenced to one year in jail, her lawyer said.

State-run media in Iran quoted her lawyer as saying no official reason was given to him for Ghavami’s conviction.

Responding to reports on Gahavami’s sentence Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said on Sunday:

‘This is an appalling verdict.

‘It’s an outrage that a young woman is being locked up simply for peacefully having her say about how women are discriminated against in Iran.

‘Ghoncheh is a prisoner of conscience and the Iranian authorities should quash the sentence and release her immediately and unconditionally.

‘The authorities should also investigate allegations that Ghoncheh was subjected to death threats by her interrogators and provide compensation for her arbitrary detention and her prolonged solitary confinement.’

“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’.”

She went on a two-week hunger strike in October to protest her detention.