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Parvin Mokhtare was just doing what any other mom would do when she took to the airwaves ofRadio Farda (RFE/RL’s Persian-language service) to protest the arrest of her son, journalist and human rights activist Kouhyar Goudarzi, who has been imprisoned off and on by the Iranian government for years. Mokhtare was her son’s fiercest advocate, conducting numerous interviews with media outlets in Iran and writing to human rights groups abroad to publicize her son’s case and secure his release.



Now an Iranian court has sentenced Mokhtare to 23 months in prison for her advocacy efforts, which judges said “[insulted] the martyrs and the Supreme Leader.” The decision was handed down in late December, some five months after Mokhtare was arrested by police as a consequence of interviews she gave to Radio Farda and others. Mokhtare was denied the right to a lawyer during the trial.



“She constantly used to update Radio Farda about the situation of detainees and post-election detainees,” Radio Farda’s Mohammad Hossein Boghrati says. “She gave us interviews on how the officials were threatening the families of im... >>>