Iran ? Amnesty International on Monday demanded the swift and unconditional release of 33 prominent Iranian female activists arrested Sunday and jailed in Tehran’s notorious high-security Evin prison. The women were arrested after peacefully protesting the trial of five other activists and grass-roots organizers against discrimination in the legal system.

On the eve of the U.S. State Department’s release of its annual human rights report and only days ahead of celebrations marking International Women’s Day, Iran’s best-known female activists were arrested early Sunday after they gathered with placards outside Tehran’s Revolutionary Court.

The five women whose trial they were protesting had put on a public rally June 12 to call for equal rights for women under Iran’s penal laws, family code and blood money practices. At the time, club-wielding security officers rounded up 70 people.

“Practically the entire top layer of the women’s movement in Iran, except for Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, who happens to be in Italy, is in jail,” said Hadi Ghaemi of Human Rights Watch in New York.