Amnesty warns over health of Iran's jailed Sakharov winner

(LONDON) - Iran's jailed activist Nasrin Sotoudeh who won a European human rights prize on Friday has been on hunger strike and in ailing health in protest at the authorities' refusal to allow face-to-face meetings with her children, Amnesty said.

It said that Sotoudeh, a 47-year-old lawyer, has been on hunger strike for 10 days and was transferred to the medical facility of Tehran's Evin prison on Monday because her health had deteriorated.

For the past three months, "Sotoudeh has only had visits from her children while behind a glass screen -- ever since the authorities discovered she had been using a tissue to write her defence for an upcoming court hearing," said Ann Harrison, deputy director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa programme.

"The Iranian authorities have imposed a travel ban on her daughter and on one occasion held her husband overnight in prison for their peaceful advocacy on her behalf," Amnesty said.

"Despite espousing the importance of the family in Iranian life, the authorities do their utmost to silence the families of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners. This is a shocking example of the lengths to which Iran will go to suppress criticism."

Sotoudeh was sentenced in January 2011 to 11 years in prison and handed a 20-year ban from practising law for "acting against national security and propaganda against the regime."

She won the European Parliament's Sakharov prize alongside a fellow Iranian, film-maker Jafar Panahi, whose gritty and socially critical movies that are banned in Iran.

The prize "is a message of solidarity and recognition to a woman and a man who have not been bowed by fear and intimidation and who have decided to put the fate of their country before their own," said parliament president Martin Schulz.

The two Iranians were shortlisted for the prestigious 50,000-euro ($65,000) prize -- whose past winners include Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan -- along with the jailed members of Russian all-girl punk band Pussy Riot, and Belarus dissident Ales Beliatsky.