Peter Kohlgraf, a German archbishop, has assumed political sponsorship (Patenschaft) for Nasrin Sotoudeh, the imprisoned human rights activist and prominent lawyer.
Behrouz Asadi, a human rights activist and spokesperson for the “Woman, Life, Freedom” association, announced on Wednesday, April 29, that this initiative was successfully finalized in collaboration with an international human rights organization in Germany. Archbishop Kohlgraf has previously accepted political sponsorship for several other Iranian political prisoners.
Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested on April 1, coinciding with the conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran. Since then, she has had only one brief phone call with her family. During that call, she did not disclose her location but stated that she was being held by Ministry of Intelligence agents. Before the start of the war, Ms. Sotoudeh had called for “humanitarian intervention” to protect the Iranian people during an interview with the French publication Le Point.
While a political sponsor does not have executive or legal authority to defend an individual in court, they can use their political status to amplify the voice of a person at risk to the public and international bodies, monitor their situation, and even request intervention from their own government.
The wave of political sponsorships for Iranian prisoners gained significant momentum following the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, with a substantial number of German parliamentarians joining the initiative. The practice is based on a resolution passed in 2003 by the Human Rights Committee of the German Parliament.
In some instances, political sponsorship has helped improve the conditions of political prisoners in Iran, though in other cases it has been unsuccessful. In several cases, despite the acceptance of sponsorship by foreign politicians, individuals sentenced to death were ultimately executed by the judiciary of the Islamic Republic.
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