TEHRAN: An Iranian court has given a women’s rights activist and journalist a suspended flogging and jail sentence for disturbing the public order, press reports said on Monday.

Nasrin Afzali “was sentenced to 10 lashes and a six-month jail term for disturbing public order. The sentences will be suspended for two years,” her lawyer Mohammad Mostafai was quoted by the Etemad newspaper as saying.

Afzali was arrested in March 2007 along with 32 other women in front of a revolutionary court where five women’s rights activists were on trial for organising a protest in a Tehran square advocating equal rights. “My client had appeared in front of the court as a journalist to cover the trial of five women who had participated in the Haft-e Tir square rally,” Mostafai said.

Afzali is also a member of the women’s committee in a radical pro-reform student group, the Office to Consolidate Unity. It is not the first time that Iran has handed a women’s rights activist a lashing sentence.

Leading activist Marzieh Mortazi Langroudi was given a suspended sentence of 10 lashes and six months in prison in February for her participation in the solidarity protest outside the revolutionary court.

The five feminists were accused of acting against national security for the June 2006 demonstration in Haft-e Tir square, where 70 people were arrested amid allegations of police brutality.—AFP