Iranian lawyer and human rights advocate Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced by an Islamic court in Tehran to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. The multiple indictments brought against her included conspiracy, incitement to corruption and prostitution, propaganda against the system, disruption of public order, and espionage. What did Sotoudeh, the 2012 recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, do? She defended Iranian women who were removing their headscarves to protest the law that required them to wear one. Supreme irony: As Sotoudeh sits in jail, Iran has been appointed to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

In the name of all the values we have always defended-equality between men and women, women’s emancipation, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience-we, Marie Claire U.S., as well as many of our international editions, call for Nasrin Sotoudeh’s unconditional release.