ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - France on Friday called for the “immediate” release of award-winning Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh who was arrested a day earlier.

“France was deeply concerned by the announcement of yesterday’s arrest of lawyer and human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh, winner of the Sakharov Prize,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement.

“This arrest illustrates yet again the Iranian regime’s systematic policy of persecution and intimidation of human rights activists. It must stop,” the statement added.

Sotoudeh is known for defending activists, women prosecuted for removing headscarves, and opposition politicians. She won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Union in 2012.

She has been imprisoned multiple times and her husband Reza Khandan who is an activist has also been detained in the infamous Evin prison since 2024.

Speaking to the Associated Press, her daughter Mehraveh Khandan who is abroad said she was worried that Tehran’s crackdown on dissent may be drowned out by the US-Israel war with Iran. She also expressed concern over airstrikes close to the prison where she is held.

The news of Sotoudeh’s arrest comes following reports of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi suffering a suspected heart attack.

France expressed “concern over the alarming news concerning the health of Narges Mohammadi,” calling for “the immediate release of Nasrin Sotoudeh and all those detained arbitrarily in Iran.”

Mohammadi, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her activism in support of women’s rights in Iran and against gender-based oppression, was arrested in December and sentenced to over seven years in jail.