Maryam Ghanbari
Iran
Maryam Ghanbari is a 28-year old lawyer and active member of Meydaan (Women’s Field) and the Volunteer Lawyers Network (a voluntary legal service for vulnerable women) and very active in the struggle of the national women’s movement against the proposed new family law bill on divorce and custody. This bill allows men under certain circumstances to take a second wife without the consent of the first, as presently required. The circumstances concerned include mental illness, infertility, a chronic illness or “lack of sexual cooperation”.
Ghanbari was arrested on 8 February 2010 in her home in Teheran by five Iranian officers. Since then she has been detained in the notorious Evin Prison.