Soha Mortezaei
Age: 28
Activities/Rights: Student activist
Status: Evin Prison
Judicial status: 6 years imprisonment
Violations: Arbitrary arrest and detention, lack of due process, unfair trial, prolonged solitary confinement, access to lawyer, education ban
Soha Mortezaei is a student activist and doctoral candidate who was beaten and arrested by security forces on the evening of 19 November 2019, at the height of the November 2019 nationwide protests in the University of Tehran female dormitories. Despite ranking tenth in the national doctoral entrance exam in political science in 2019, her application was marked with “defected file” on the orders of the Ministry of Intelligence and she was effectively banned from continuing her higher education. She began a 19-day sit-in at the end of October 2019 to protest her education ban and “star” status (a term used for students who have stars next to their names, marking that they had either been banned from education or that they had been registered under special circumstances). For 19 days, she sat alone on campus with a placard, on which she had written her demands and issues created for her by the Ministry of Intelligence. On 9 November 2020, she was sentenced to six years imprisonment on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security” by Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Salavati. According to her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, “Her sit-in at the university to protest being denied her doctoral degree was cited as the main example of the charges.” In February 2021, Branch 54 of the Tehran Court of Appeals upheld a six-year prison sentence for Soha. She was arrested and detained for a day for attending a ceremony for poet and writer, Samad Shabani in March 2022. At the height of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” nationwide protests, she was violently arrested and sexually assaulted while on her way to work on 21 November 2022, beaten so badly that she had to be transferred to hospital before being returned to Evin Prison. She was later transferred to Qarchak Prison where prison authorities refused to register her complaint against the sexual and physical assault with the Forensic Medical Organisation and further denied her medical treatment. Soha was briefly furloughed for emergency medical treatment in March 2023. She was transferred back to Evin Prison on 1 May 2023, where she is currently serving her sentence.