The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported on August 29 that Razieh Hashemi, a licensed attorney from Abdanan in Ilam province, was seized by security forces on August 27 without presentation of a warrant and taken to an undisclosed location. Three days later her family’s repeated inquiries had produced no information on her whereabouts, condition, place of detention, or the charges against her, and no reason for the arrest had been given. The case follows a documented pattern of incommunicado detention of Iranian defence lawyers, with monitoring groups counting dozens of attorneys arrested, summoned, or imprisoned since January. It occurs against a backdrop of mass group prosecutions of protesters, in which the removal of defence counsel eliminates one of the last remaining procedural checks.

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