Woman Protester Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison

Iranian authorities have sentenced a woman protester to 11 years in prison for throwing stones at the entrance of a "martyrs cemetery."

The Revolutionary Court of central Arak city also ruled that Mina Yaghoubi, 33,  should receive 85 lashes, she said in a video released on Tuesday, and she must wash the cemetery's tombstones for a total of 124 hours of community service.

"For a long time, I was subjected to intense interrogation and torture, for 12 hours a day, and now I have been sentenced to 11 years imprisonment, 124 hours of washing graves, 85 lashes and two years of exile," she said in the video. 

Yaghoubi said she was told several times by the court that if she expressed regret over her role in the protests, her prison sentence would be reduced. But in response she said that she would never back down "from the ideals of the Women, Life, Freedom movement."

Iran has been swept by protests since the September death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Tehran’s morality police. 

Young Iranian women have been at the forefront of the protest movement.

The authorities have cracked down on the demonstrations, which pose one of the most serious challenges to the theocracy installed by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The demonstrations and clampdown on dissent have been particularly intense in the country’s western Kurdish areas and Sistan and Baluchistan province, home to Iran’s beleaguered Sunni Baluch community.

Activists say security forces have killed more than 520 people and detained over 18,000 in connection with the protests. 

After staged trials, around 20 people were handed capital punishment, mostly on non-murder charges. Four of them have been executed so far, amid international outrage.