Sedigheh Vasmaghi is an Islamic studies researcher and the spokesperson for the First City Council of Tehran. Vesmaghi has worked as a writer and political affairs analyst for Soroush newspaper and magazine, and taught Islamic jurisprudence at the Faculty of Theology, University of Tehran. After running as a candidate in the first elections for the City Council of Tehran in 1998, she was elected and joined the city council, working there as a member of it from 1998 to 2001.

In November 2018, Vasmaghi and a number of other prominent religious intellectuals and scholars published an open letter in which they strongly condemned the “exhumation of the body of a Baha'i compatriot,” calling the act sacreligious, unethical, and “unpatriotic”. According to the letter’s signatories, such actions “violate and weaken the solidarity of Iranians.”

Vasmaghi published two books during her time living abroad, entitled There Must Be A Way, a memoir of her time as spokesperson for the First City Council of Tehran, and Re-reading Sharia.

On June 24, 2020, Sedigheh Vasmaghi was summoned to the Revolutionary Courts of Tehran. These summons were prompted by a legal complaint filed by the Ministry of Intelligence against Vasmaghi on the charge of “propaganda against the state.”

Vasmaghi was arrested for the first time on October 15, 2017, upon her return to Iran, at Imam Khomeini Airport. The reason for her arrest was later revealed to be a five year prison sentence which had been issued against her in absentia after she had left the country. 

This prison sentence was issued by Judge Mohammad Moghiseh on July 7, 2014, in Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Courts of Tehran, on the charge of “propaganda activities against the state.”

Vasmaghi was released shortly after her arrest due to her poor physical condition during her detention. 

Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai, Sedigheh Vasmaghi’s lawyer, spoke to IranWire about her arrest, saying “According to a report by the Ministry of Intelligence, after Ms. Vasmaghi legally left the country in 2011, she was tried in absentia and sentenced to five years  imprisonment.”

Vasmaghi left Iran in April 2011 to work as a visiting professor at the Department of Islamic Studies at the Georg August University of Göttingen in Germany. She was invited to Sweden a year later to work as a visiting academic.

In Sweden, Vasmaghi worked in the city of Uppsala at the Faculty of Law of Uppsala University. It was during this time that Vasmaghi published her two books.

According to Tabatabai, Vasmaghi’s “membership in the Green Path of Hope Movement," the protest movement formed in support of Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s presidential candidacy during the controversial 2009 presidential election, and her "membership in the Committee for the Protection of Victims of the Events of 2009," which aimed to give support those who were injured, arrested or killed during the widespread protests throughout Iran following those elections, were cited as evidence in support of the criminal charges against her. 

On October 22, 2017, Vasmaghi filed an appeal against the lower court’s verdict and sentence.

Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai, Vasmaghi's lawyer, told IranWire: “The attitude of the Head Judge of the branch was very harsh. From the very start, whenever he addressed Ms. Vasmaghi, he would describe her as being a counter-revolutionary, foreign lackey, et cetera … When we asked about the reasons behind the accusation [against Vasmaghi], he would only say that the report from the Ministry of Intelligence was sufficient.”

Tabatabai also spoke about how he believed that Vasmaghi’s sentence was biased and a miscariage of justice, saying: “Ms. Vasmaghi denied the court’s claim that she had ever been a member of the Green Path of Hope Movement. In response to the court’s claims about the Committee for the Victims of 2009 Elections, Vasmaghi stated that ‘It was a legal organization established by a principlist [a right-wing hardliner conservative Iranian political party] City Council, and that I only rented my office to them rather than actually being a member of the organization.’"

According to Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai, Judge Moghiseh asked Vasmaghi: “What profession do you work in, that you think you have the right to comment on the stoning punishment of Sakineh Mohammadi?"

Sakineh Mohammadi is an Iranian Azeri woman who was sentenced to death by stoning on the charge of adultery and conspiracy to commit murder. She was released in 2014 and the stoning was never enforced.

Vasmaghi responded to the judge’s question, saying: “I am an expert in and professor of Islamic jurisprudence and Sharia, and I taught at the most prestigious university in the country, the University of Tehran.”

During the court hearings, the judge also asked Vasmaghi another question about her protests over the death of Haleh Sahabi, a democracy activist who died from cardiac arrest at her father’s funeral after members of the Basij militia assaulted her as they were breaking up the ceremony.

Tabatabai recounted how: “Judge Moghiseh spoke to her, saying ‘When Haleh Sahabi died, you accused the Iranian government of tyranny and cruelty. Vasmaghi responded ‘I told the state officials that they should work to prevent tyranny so that what happened at Kahrizak [Sahabi’s death occurred in Kahrizak Cemetery, where her father’s funeral was taking place] would not happen again.’” 

However, Sedigheh Vasmaghi and Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai’s defence did not sway Judge Moghiseh, who had already made his decision. Tabatabai said: “The judge rejected our protests and wanted to issue a detention order [for Vasmaghi]. However, as we wanted to appeal the decision and have the case transferred to a Branch of the Court of Appeals, he said, ‘I will issue a bail order.’ He then set the bail at a billion tomans and, as Dr. Vasmaghi was unable to afford such an amount, they transferred her to Evin Prison for detention.” 

According to Tabatabai, the court proceedings in Vasmaghi’s case were full of legal errors and malpractice: “The court hearings took place without a representative from prosecution and without a second judge. The bail was extremely high and extortionate. In addition, a bail should only be issued when there is a genuine concern that the accused will try to escape. Dr. Vasmaghi decided of her own accord to return from Europe and there is no danger of escape.”

At the end of the trial, Vasmaghi was arrested on the orders of the judge and transferred to the women's ward of Evin Prison. About two weeks later, on November 5, 2017, she was released from Evin Prison on a bail of a billion tomans.

Sedigheh Vasmaghi’s case was heard in the Court of Appeals in May 2018. The court ruled that her sentence should be commuted from five years’ imprisonment to five years' suspended imprisonment.
 
On September 21, 2018, Vasmaghi was informed that she had been served a travel ban and was forbidden from leaving Iran, as she was trying to board an international flight out of the country at Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran. Vasmaghi was told that she was serving a travel ban as her legal case was still "open" in Evin Prison.

When the court’s verdict was initially issued, Vasmaghi was living outside Iran. During this time, she wrote a letter to Hassan Rouhani, Iran's president, in which she described the coercive pressures and threats used by the Ministry of Intelligence. In the letter, Vasmaghi also said she intended to return to Iran “after having spent about five years in exile.”

In her letter, Vasmaghi wrote: “Since 2008, the restrictions placed on me have increased day by day to the extent that I not only am not able to express my views and opinions in public and academic assemblies, but also in private assemblies and, now finally, in my own home. I am not even allowed to express my opinions and thoughts on religious matters [her academic expertise]. These restrictions have been imposed on me illegally by agents from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence so much so that in 2010, the Ministry of Intelligence contacted me so that they could inform me of a court summons and threaten me openly and explicitly."

Referring to her decision to return to Iran, Vasmaghi wrote at the time: “The current policy is to make those who decide to return home regret their decision; this is a policy that has limited our freedom, to choosing between silence, exile or imprisonment.”

In another excerpt of her letter, she wrote: “My husband and I were able to endure the difficulties of the 1970s and 1980s but we have not been able to endure this period of exile. However, on the other hand, due to our physical condition and severely weak eyesight, enduring imprisonment would also be difficult.”