An Iranian-British woman who was arrested after a demonstration in Iran against a ban on women attending a men’s volleyball match has been jailed for a year.
Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, was detained on June 20 outside the city’s Azadi Stadium, where she and others were demanding that women be allowed in to watch a volleyball match between Iran and Italy.
She was charged by a court in Tehran with “activities and propaganda against the Islamic Republic”.
Alireza Tabatabaie, Miss Ghavami’s lawyer, said she was hopeful that her sentence could be reduced for good behaviour. He said she had been found guilty of “propagating against the ruling system.”
Miss Ghavami was originally released shortly after being detained by the police – but was re-arrested ten days later, when she went to collect her belongings, and then held in solitary confinement without access to her lawyer for several weeks. During this time interrogators are said to have put Miss Ghavami under severe psychological pressure, threatening to move her to Gharchak Prison in Tehran Province where prisoners convicted of serious criminal offences are held in dismal conditions. Interrogators reportedly warned she “would not walk out of prison alive”.
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