"France calls for the immediate release of Nasrin Sotoudeh and all those arbitrarily detained in Iran," the foreign ministry's spokesman said.

The attorney's daughter Mehraveh Khandan said she had been arrested on Wednesday night, with relatives finding her mother and father's electronic devices had been confiscated.

Sotoudeh, who won awards including the 2012 Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament and the 2020 Right Livelihood award, has been repeatedly arrested for her work.

Her husband and Mehraveh's father, Reza Khandan, has been held in prison since December 2024.

Sotoudeh has for years campaigned on some of the most sensitive issues in the Islamic republic, notably working to prevent the execution of youths convicted of crimes committed while minors.

"This arrest is yet another illustration of the Iranian regime's systematic policy of persecuting and intimidating human rights defenders, which must stop," the spokesman said.