Iranian rights lawyer jailed for 18 years for spreading anti-govt propaganda

Tehran, Mar 5(ANI): A Tehran court has reportedly sentenced a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer to 18 years in prison for spreading anti-government propaganda, endangering national security and accepting an illegal German human rights prize in 2009.

Abdolfattah Soltani was also banned from practising his profession for 20 years and will be sent to a remote prison where it will be difficult for his family to visit him, his daughter Maede Soltani claimed.

She added that the family would appeal against the ruling.

"We hope this unfair sentence will be overruled," she added.

Soltani said she did not know whether her father already knew about the sentence.

The revolutionary court also ruled that Soltani would be transferred to a remote prison in Borazjan, about 620 miles south-west of Tehran, The Guardian reports.

Soltani was arrested in 2005 and again during 2009 on "politically motivated" charges, according to Amnesty International.

"Abdolfattah Soltani is one of the bravest human rights defenders in Iran," the organization had said following his detention in September 2011.

Soltani, 58, co-founded a human rights group with Iranian Nobel Peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

He was arrested last year and has been lodged in Tehran's Evin prison. (ANI)