Iran should remove restrictions on access to lawyers for people charged with national security crimes, Human Rights Watch stated on 24 March 2016. Nine months after Iran’s new criminal procedure expanded detainees’ access to a lawyer during the investigative phase, authorities are denying people charged with national security and political crimes access to an independent legal defense. These defendants should be able to choose their own lawyers, HRW states, thereby referring to the UN’s Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, principle 1 in particular.