Monireh Arabshahi is an Iranian women’s rights defender who was arrested in early April 2019 after taking off her hijab in a women-only carriage of the Tehran metro and handing out flowers alongside her daughter Yasaman Aryani as part of a protest against compulsory veiling. She was detained together with her daughter on 10 and 11 April 2019 respectively and transferred to Qarchak and then Kachooie prisons. In July 2019 Branch 28 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court convicted her on charges including “assembly and collusion to act against national security”, “spreading propaganda against the system” and “encouraging corruption and prostitution”, issuing a combined sentence equating to 16 years although under Article 134 only the most severe sentence applies, resulting in a ten‑year term. On 5 February 2020, an appeals court reduced her effective prison term to five years and six months. She suffered from a thyroid condition, was repeatedly denied adequate medical care and intermittently granted medical furloughs between 2021 and 2022. She was hospitalised in May 2022 due to deteriorating health. She remained in prison until being released under a general amnesty on 15 February 2023. Her case has drawn widespread international condemnation as emblematic of the arbitrary prosecution of women’s rights defenders challenging Iran’s forced veiling laws.