On September 25 the convictions of eight lawyers from Gilan province in a joint case before the Revolutionary Court in Rasht were reported, on charges of “propaganda against the system” and insulting Iran’s current and former supreme leaders. This report places the verdicts within a wider pattern: defendants in certain security cases may choose only …
A review of cases documented between September 2025 and September 2026 finds at least 135 attorneys across Iran subjected to judicial and security measures, including summonses, arrests, prison sentences, bans from practising law and travel restrictions. The compiler, HRANA, verified the identities of 60 lawyers across fourteen provinces and documented at least 75 further cases in …
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 …
This July 30 report from the IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers (Iran) documents the conditional release of defense lawyer Elham Zeraatpisheh on bail in Shiraz, alongside the recent arrest of attorney Astareh (Maryam) Ansari, a member of the Fars Bar Association, at her home. These cases are part of a broader campaign in …
The IAPL Monitoring Committee reported on July 10 that human rights defenders and lawyers Nazanin Salari, Mahmoud Taravat-Roy, and Massoud Ahmadian face imminent arrest and detention in Iran. On June 8, Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz had sentenced the three to a combined three years’ imprisonment on charges of “assembly and collusion …
On April 1, 2026, prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested without a judicial warrant by security forces who raided her home at night and transferred her to an undisclosed location. Agents also seized personal belongings including phones and laptops without legal authorization. The arrest came while her husband, Reza Khandan, was already …
On March 24, 2026 — the eve of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year — human rights organizations documented a new phase in Iran’s systematic use of judicial institutions to suppress political dissent, describing the Islamic Republic’s strategy as “Official State Terrorism and Arbitrary Deprivation of Life.” Iranian courts have processed over 10,000 cases arising from …
Babakhani, A. (2023). Agents of Change or Agents of the Status Quo: Iranian Lawyers’ Approaches to Women Seeking Divorce in the Context of Discriminatory Divorce Law (Doctoral dissertation, University of Delaware). Summary: Since the 1979 revolution in Iran, the state has relegated women to a subordinate position, treating them as second-class citizens. Existing literature on …
Hadi Enayat, Law, State, and Society in Modern Iran : Constitutionalism, Autocracy, and Legal Reform, 1906-1941. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 1st ed. 2013. Summary: Using a ‘Historical Institutionalist’ approach, this book sheds light on a relatively understudied dimension of state-building in early twentieth century Iran, namely the quest for judicial reform and the rule of law …