Abdolfattah Soltani

The office of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), a Tehran based NGO co-founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, along with other prominent human rights lawyers, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, Mohammad Seyfzadeh, Mohammad Sharif and Abdolfattah Soltani, has been forcibly closed and its members harassed, intimidated and some arrested. This is believed to be an attempt by Iranian security forces to send a warning to a growing movement of human rights defenders to curtail their work. The closure of the Centre is in violation of Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which guarantees the right to freedom of association. Iran is a state party to the ICCPR