An activist who participated in the funeral of a teenager who died after an incident in the subway was arrested in Iran

60-year-old Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested in Tehran on Sunday during the funeral of 17-year-old Armita Garavand, who died a day earlier after nearly a month of intensive care.

N. Sotoudeh, who was awarded the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament in 2012 for her human rights protection activities, has been detained several times in recent years.

“My wife was detained at Armita Garawand’s funeral along with others,” her husband Reza Khandan told AFP, adding that Sotoudeh had been severely beaten during the detention.

Earlier this month, Ms. Garawand was brought to Tehran’s Fajr Hospital after an incident on the subway that left her in a coma.

Her death comes just over a year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman who was arrested by morality police for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women. A year ago, this incident sparked mass protests across the country.

Local news agency Fars said Sotoudeh “was detained and handed over to judicial authorities” for “not wearing a head covering” and “disturbing the psychological safety of the public”.

Covering the head and neck has been mandatory for women in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

After months of protests in Iran following Amini’s death, women are increasingly flouting Iran’s strict dress code.

In 2018, Sotoudeh was jailed after she defended a woman arrested for demonstrating against the compulsory wearing of the headscarf in Iran.

In 2019, she was sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of “inciting depravity and lewdness.”

Ms. Garawand’s case was first reported on October 3 by the Kurdish rights group Hengaw, claiming that she was seriously injured in an incident in Tehran’s subway involving Iran’s morality police.

But authorities say she suffered a sudden drop in blood pressure and deny any “physical or verbal altercations” took place.

A subway surveillance video broadcast on state television shows a teenage girl being evacuated from the subway after she appears to have lost consciousness in a carriage.

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