Authorities in Iran have decided that she will be allowed to leave the notorious Evin prison for three weeks due to health reasons, according to her legal representative Mostafa Nili via social media.
Narges Mohammadi suffers from a heart condition, and according to a medical report published in September, a serious complication has occurred in her aorta. In recent weeks, a support group advocating for her release has demanded that she at least receive proper care.
The temporary release is not enough, insists her family and supporters in a statement, describing it as both too little and too late:
"We demand an immediate and unconditional release for Narges Mohammadi, or at least that her permission is extended to three months."
Longer sentence
Mohammadi has been imprisoned since autumn 2021 and has been sentenced several times since then – her sentence has been extended by several years, with more lashes.
She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for having worked for women's rights in deeply conservative Islamic Iran for over 20 years. At the award ceremony in Oslo, a chair stood symbolically empty, while the prize was received by her two children.
Was attacked
In connection with the award, Mohammadi also began a hunger strike in protest against her and other prisoners being denied hospital care and against women being forced to wear hijabs in Iran.
Last summer, UN rapporteurs warned that Iran was failing to provide Narges Mohammadi with the care she needed. She had then been attacked in prison, and was reported to have "lost consciousness and suffered injuries to her ribs and other parts of her body".
Narges Mohammadi, born 1972 in Zanjan, Iran, is an Iranian human rights activist of Kurdish origin.
She studied physics at Imam Khomeini International University and worked as an engineer until she was dismissed for political reasons in 2010.
During her studies, she met her future husband Taghi Rahmani, a journalist, writer, and human rights activist. The couple has two children.
Narges Mohammadi is active in the Iranian organization Defenders of Human Rights Center, which provides political prisoners with defense lawyers. She is also one of the founders of the Iranian National Peace Council, which consists of writers, artists, lawyers, and activists working for human rights in Iran.
For her struggle for democracy and women's rights, and against holding political prisoners without trial, Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to long prison terms and travel bans. She has been imprisoned in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, where prisoners are regularly subjected to torture, long-term isolation, abuse, and denial of medical care, according to Amnesty International, among others.
