Iran arrests Nobel prize winner Mohammadi, eight other activists

(FILES) A handout photo provided by the Narges Mohammadi Foundation on October 2, 2023 shows an undated, unlocated photo of Iranian rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi. (Photo by Handout / NARGES MOHAMMADI FOUNDATION / AFP)

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Iranian security forces on Friday “violently” arrested the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi along with at least eight other activists at a memorial ceremony for a lawyer who died earlier this month, her supporters said.

Mohammadi, who was granted temporary leave from prison in December 2024, was detained along with eight other activists at the ceremony for lawyer Khosrow Alikordi, who was found dead in his office last week, her foundation wrote on X.

Those arrested at the ceremony in the eastern city of Mashhad included Mohammadi’s fellow prominent activist Sepideh Gholian, who had previously been jailed alongside her in Tehran’s Evin prison.

Also writing on X, Mohammadi’s Paris-based husband, Taghi Rahmani, confirmed the arrests. The Hengaw rights group said the activists had been “violently detained and transferred to an undisclosed location”.

“Narges was beaten on the legs, and she was held by her hair and dragged down,” one of her brothers, Hamid Mohammadi, told AFP in Osl,o where he lives.

Alikordi, 45, was a lawyer who had defended clients in sensitive cases, including people arrested in a crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted in 2022.

His body was found on December 5, with rights groups calling for an investigation into his death, which Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights said “had very serious suspicion of a state murder”.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) posted footage of Mohammadi, who was not wearing the headscarf women are obliged to wear in public in the Islamic republic, attending the ceremony with a crowd of other supporters of Alikordi.

It said they shouted slogans including “Long live Iran,” “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation” and “Death to the dictator” at the ceremony which, in line with Islamic tradition, marked seven days since Alikordi’s death.

Other footage broadcast by Persian-language television channels based outside Iran showed Mohammadi climbing on top of a vehicle with a microphone and encouraging people to chant slogans.

– Years behind bars –

Mohammadi, 53, who was last arrested in November 2021, has spent much of the past decade behind bars.

Her two twin children received the Nobel prize in Oslo on her behalf in 2023, and she has now not seen them for 11 years. Mohammadi said last month in a message marking the 19th birthday of her twins that she had been permanently barred from leaving Iran.

But she has remained defiant outside jail, refusing to wear the headscarf, addressing foreign audiences via video conferences and meeting activists across Iran.

Her temporary release in December 2024 was allowed on health grounds after problems related to her lungs and other issues. But supporters have warned she could be re-arrested at any time.

“In the prison, she had lots of complications. Her lungs, her heart, she has had some operations,” said Hamid Mohammadi.

“I’m not worried that she is arrested. She’s been arrested a lot of times, but what worries me most is that they will put a lot of pressure on her physical and psychological condition. And it might lead to again experiencing those complications,” he added.

She won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her two-decade fight for human rights in the Islamic republic and strongly backed the 2022-2023 protests sparked by the death in custody of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini.

Mohammadi has also regularly predicted the downfall of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The clerical authorities were shaken by the months-long protest movement calling for women to dress freely but also making wider political demands. It only dwindled in the face of an intense crackdown that was condemned by the international community.

In the birthday message to her twins, she said while Iranian authorities ‘stamp the word ‘permanent’ on our documents, they themselves live each day in fear of the fall that will inevitably come at the hands of the people of Iran”.

AFP

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