Narges Mohammadi has not seen her children, teenage twins Kiana and Ali, in eleven years, and according to the human rights activist herself, she will not do so for a long time.
"I applied for a passport so I could go and meet you," she says in a video greeting seen by the AFP news agency.
But, she says, “the Islamic Republic has issued and enforced two types of travel bans, including one that is in effect forever.”
She says the authorities stamped the word “permanent” on her application documents, “while they themselves live every day in fear that the (regime’s) fall will inevitably come after the intervention of the Iranian people.”
Narges Mohammadi, 53, was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for women's and human rights in her home country. She has spent much of the past ten years in the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran, but was granted a limited medical leave in December last year, and is still living outside prison.
Her lawyers have warned that she risks being sent back at any time.
The 19-year-old twins live in Paris with their father, Narges Mohammadi's husband, and received her Nobel Prize in Oslo in 2023, which she received for her over 20 years of work for women's rights in Iran.
AFP has not been able to verify the information about new issuances of various travel bans.
