The court also ruled that Sotudeh cannot practice law or leave the country for 20 years. That unusual sentence parallels the one given a few weeks ago to filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who is barred from making films or leaving the country for 20 years.
Sotudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, reported the sentence given his wife. He said five years of the 11-year sentence were for being a member of the organization Ebadi created with her Nobel cash award, the Human Rights Defense Center. But Sotudeh’s husband said his wife was never a member of Ebadi’s organization; she simply acted as Ebadi’s lawyer.
The husband said one year of the sentence was for propaganda against the regime and the remaining five years for failing to wear a head covering in a video she made.
Sotudeh, 47, is the mother of two children aged 3 and 11.
Several others associated in one way or another with Ebadi have been pursued by the Judiciary in recent months in what appears to be retaliation for Ebadi’s growing denunciations of the Islamic Republic now that she lives in exile and is not traveling back and forth from her home in Tehran.
One of the co-founders of Ebadi’s group, Mohammad Seifzadeh, was sentenced in October to nine years in prison to be followed by a 10-year ban on practicing law.
Sotudeh has been arrested periodically over the years. Her legal practice focused on women’s and children’s rights cases.
In Washington, the State Department issued a statement Monday condemning the sentence, calling it “unjust and harsh.”
It said, “Her conviction is part of a systematic attempt on the part of Iranian authorities to silence the defense of democracy and human rights in Iran. It is one in a series of harsh sentences targeting the lawyers of Iran’s human rights community which perseveres despite threats, torture, and imprisonment.”
In other recent cases, the Judiciary has sentenced:
• Seven members of the Liberation Movement of Iran for terms up to 10 years. The Liberation Movement was founded in the 1960s by Mehdi Bazargan, who was the first prime minister after the revolution, chosen by Ayatollah Khomeini;
• Nasour Taqipur, a young blogger, to seven years in prison;
• Jafar Kazemi, a 46-year-old lithographer for textbooks at Amir Kabir University, to death; and
• Shiva Nazar-Ahari, a 26-year-old women’s rights activist and leader of the One Million Signatures Campaign, a petition drive to revoke laws discriminating against women, to four years in prison and 74 lashes.
