The Associated Press reports
that on Tuesday, the cartoonist and social activist Atena Farghadani had been
released from Evin Prison, in line with an earlier reduction of her sentence
from a staggering 12 years to only 18 months.
However, despite the greatly diminished punishment, human rights
advocates lament the fact that the appeals court upheld any punishment
whatsoever, given that her charges were based on her having drawn and shared a
cartoon depicting Iranian officials as animals in order to protest policies
that restricted the rights of women and greatly reduced access to birth control.
It is generally understood that the severity of her initial
sentence was also related to the fact that after she was arrested and then
released on bail, she took to YouTube to expose some of the abuse and
mistreatment she had suffered at the hands of authorities. Some of those
authorities even tried to add further time to her sentence by levying a charge
of “non-adultery illegitimate relations” based on her having shaken hands with
her male lawyer, but this charge was thrown out ahead of her appeals trial.
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