A British Iranian woman Ghoncheh Ghavami has been in an Iranian prison for more than 2 months for attempting to watch a men’s volleyball game between Iran and Italy on Friday, June 20, 2014.
He brother, Iman Ghavami told local news channel ITV that his sister called the family in tears, lamenting that she had been put in solitary confinement for 41 days, adding that the family can barely “hold themselves together”
Ghavami is a lawyer with both British and Iranian nationality. She schooled in London.
Ghavami had been protesting with other female rights activists against a 1979 ban on women watching male sport, especially with mixed crown and men not “fully covered up”, which the laws of the conservative country terms “un-Islamic”.
Iran’s head of police, Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam while speaking to Fars news agency said “In the current conditions, the mixing of men and women in stadiums is not in the public interest. The stance taken by religious scholars and the supreme leader remains unchanged, and as the enforcer of law, we cannot allow women to enter stadiums.”
Human rights activist were hoping the election of moderate President Hassan Rouhani would see the country tend towards more liberal laws, but the country’s supreme religious establishment led by Ayatollah Khomeini seems to hold more power than envisaged.
![Ghonche Ghavami, 25, was held in solitary confinement in notorious Evin jail [Photo Credit: Independent UK]](https://www.thetrentonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Ghonche-Ghavami-The-Trent.jpg)
