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Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize 2018
Since 1984
“The award given by lawyers to a lawyer”
Thirty-three years after Nelson Mandela
The 23rd "International Human Rights Prize Ludovic –Trarieux 2018
awarded to Iranian woman lawyer
sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes
and jailed in Evin
Prison in Teheran
The official award ceremony will take place
on Friday, May 24, 2019
at the courthouse in Brussels.
As a lawyer, in 2003, Nasrin Sotoudeh Langroudi, 55, became an active member of the Center for
the Defense of Human Rights and the Society for the Protection of the Rights of
Children. She was the lawyer for women’s rights activists, , journalists , politicians and legal colleagues such as Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
She was first arrested in September 2010 on an array of charges including
"propaganda against the state" and "cooperating with the Center
for the Defense of Human Rights."
On January 9, 2011 she was sentenced to 11 years in prison and an
additional 20-year ban on practicing law also bars her from traveling
outside the country once her sentence is complete. On September 2011, an appeals court reduces Sotoudeh’s sentence from 11 years to 6, and her ban from
working as a lawyer is reduced from 20 to 10.
After three years, in September 18, 2013, she was released from Evin Prison, on the eve of President Rouhani’s first visit
to the United States.
On October 18, 2014: Branch Two of the Lawyers’Disciplinary
Court at the Iranian Bar Association bans Sotoudeh
from her law practice for three years. On October 21, Sotoudeh
begins a sit-in in every day front of the Bar Association to protest the ruling
banning her from her law practice. Finally in June 2015, her license to
practice law is reinstated but not for political or medias cases.
Since 2017, Nasrin Sotoudeh
has worked as a defense attorney for
women charged with violating Iran’s compulsory veiling law. Subsequently, Nasrin Sotoudeh was abruptly
re-arrested on June 13, 2018 and taken to Evin prison
where she is informed she has been sentenced to five years in prison after
being convicted in absentia on unspecified charges. She started a hunger strike
on 25 August in protest at the Iranian authorities’harassment
of her family and friends. Her husband, Reza Khandan,
was arrested on September 4th, 2018 .
She received
the Sakharov Prize jointly with iraniam filmmaker Jafar Panahi, in 2012.
She was
awarded on Friday September 21 in Paris Law Courts with the 23rd International Human Rights Prize Ludovic-Trarieux 2018 by a Jury of 25 european lawyers, representing
main European bars and major lawyers organizations fighting for human rights :
Amsterdam, Berlin, Bordeaux Brussels, Geneva, Paris, Roma, Luxemburg, European
Bar Human Rights Institute (IDHAE) and of Union Internationale
des Avocats (UIA meeting in Paris Bar
Association Mainroom.The Jury launched an appeal to release
immediately and without conditions.
Since 1984, the "International Human Rights Prize Ludovic
-Trarieux” is awarded to " a lawyer, regardless of nationality or Bar, who
thoroughout his career has illustrated, by his
activity or his suffering, the defence of human
rights, the promotion of defence rights, the
supremacy of law, and the struggle against racism and intolerance in any form
".
Since 2003, the Prize is awarded every year in partnership by the Human
Rights Institute of The Bar of Bordeaux, the Human Rights Institute of the Bar
of Paris, the Human Rights Institute of The Bar of Brussels, l'Unione forense per la tutela dei diritti
dell'uomo (Roma), Rechtsanwaltskammer
Berlin, the Bar of Luxemburg, the Bar of Geneva, the Bar of Amsterdam as well
as the Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA), and
the European Bar Human Rights Institute (IDHAE) whose members are the biggest european law societies fighting for human rights. It is
presented every year in a city that is home to one of the member Institutes.
It is the oldest and most prestigious award given to a lawyer in the
world, commemorating the memory of the French lawyer, Ludovic Trarieux
(1840-1904), who in the midst of the Dreyfus Affair, in France, in 1898,
founded the " League for the Defence of Human
Rights and the Citizen ", because, he said: " It was not only the
single cause of a man which was to be defended, but behind this cause, law,
justice, humanity ".
The first Prize was awarded on March 29th, 1985 to Nelson Mandela then
in jail. It was officially presented to his daughter, Zenani
Mandela Dlamini, on April 27th 1985, in front of
forty presidents of Bars and Law Societies from Europe and Africa. It was the
first award given to Mandela in France and the first around the world given by
lawyers. On February 11th 1990, Nelson Mandela was released. Since then, it was
d ecided that the Prize would be awarded again.
BAR OF THE YEAR