Watchdog

Baha'i poet Mahvash Sabet, who was jailed for nearly a decade in Iran, has been selected as the 2017 International Writer of Courage.

Northern Ireland poet Michael Longley named Sabet at the PEN Pinter Prize ceremony at the British Library in London on October 10.

Longley won the prize earlier this year. The award is shared with a writer who has faced persecution.

Longley said he was “humbled” to share the PEN Pinter Prize with Sabet, saying that she is "at heart a lyrical poet who sings the beauty of the world."

"Her imagination is rhapsodic. Her poems want to soar," he added.

Longley also said that Sabet's incarceration in Iran was "a sin against the light."

Sabet was one of seven Baha'i leaders arrested in 2008 and convicted of espionage and spreading propaganda against the clerical establishment.

She was released in September.

Baha’is face state persecution in Iran where their faith is not recognized in the country’s constitution.

BRUSSELS -- European lawmakers have chosen the three finalists for this year's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

The European Parliament's foreign affairs and development committees voted on October 10 to short-list a group of people representing the Venezuelan opposition, Guatemalan human rights defender Aura Lolita Chavez Ixcaquic, and the Swedish-Eritrean prisoner of conscience Dawit Isaak.

They were among six nominees for the European Parliament’s prestigious award, which honors individuals and organizations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The three nominees who failed to make the shortlist are Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death in 2010 under Pakistan´s blasphemy law, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, co-chairs of a pro-Kurdish party in Turkey, and Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, a human rights defender from Burundi.

The recipient of the award will be announced on October 26 with a ceremony to take place at the parliament in Strasbourg in December.