Sotoudeh allowed to see her kids

Nasrin Sotoudeh meeting her children at Evin prison.

Mother and children are separated by a thick glass window and can only speak over a telephone link.  In the video, Sotoudeh is trying to play with and humor her four-year-old son, Nima, while her 11-year-old daughter, Mehraveh, stands in front of the window wiping tears from her eyes.

The family said it was the children’s first meeting with their mother in several months.

The family said last year that the boy doesn’t understand why his mother doesn’t come home and seems to feel he has done something wrong and she is punishing him by staying away.

Sotoudeh, 45, is one of several human rights lawyers who worked with Shirin Ebadi’s group to defend Iranian citizens.  She was originally sentenced to 11 years in prison for such crimes as “propaganda against the regime,” but her term was subsequently reduced to six years.

Meanwhile, another lawyer associated with Ebadi’s Defenders of Human Rights Center, Abdol-Fattah Soltani, has been sentenced to 13 years by the Tehran Revolutionary Court.  The sentence will not be served in prison but in internal exile in the remote city of Borazjan.

His daughter, Maede, who lives in Germany, told The Associated Press her father was told the sentence would be reduced if he were to apologize and publicly denounce Ebadi in an open letter or videotaped interview.

The regime cannot touch Ebadi, who left Iran for a brief foreign speaking tour the day before the 2009 elections.

When the disorders began after the elections, the regime launched a crackdown and friends told Ebadi to stay outside Iran.  The crackdown has since taken in everyone linked to Ebadi’s office.