Iranian security forces on Friday violently arrested 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi along with at least eight other activists during 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 at the ceremony for Khosrow Alikordi, a lawyer found dead in his office last week, according to her foundation’s post on X. Among those arrested was Sepideh Gholian, a fellow prominent activist who had previously been jailed alongside Mohammadi in Tehran’s Evin prison.
Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, based in Paris, confirmed the arrests on X. The rights group Hengaw said the activists had been “violently detained and transferred to an undisclosed location.”
“She was beaten on the legs, held by her hair, and dragged down,” her brother Hamid Mohammadi told AFP from Oslo, where he lives.
Alikordi, 45, had defended clients involved in sensitive cases, including individuals arrested during the nationwide protests of 2022. Rights groups have called for an investigation into his death, with Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights raising “very serious suspicion of a state murder.”
Footage shared by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) showed Mohammadi, not wearing the headscarf mandated for women in public, attending the ceremony with other supporters of Alikordi. Attendees chanted slogans such as “Long live Iran,” “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation,” and “Death to the dictator.” The gathering marked seven days since Alikordi’s death, in accordance with Islamic tradition.
Other videos broadcast by Persian-language channels outside Iran showed Mohammadi standing on a vehicle with a microphone, encouraging the crowd to chant slogans.
Mohammadi, 53, who was last arrested in November 2021, has spent much of the past decade in prison. Her twin children received the Nobel Prize on her behalf in 2023, and she has not seen them for 11 years. Last month, in a message marking their 19th birthday, she said she had been permanently barred from leaving Iran.
Despite these restrictions, Mohammadi has remained defiant outside jail, refusing to wear the headscarf, addressing foreign audiences via video, and meeting activists across Iran.
Her temporary release in December 2024 was granted on health grounds after lung problems and other medical issues. Supporters warn she could be re-arrested at any time.
“In prison, she had many complications. Her lungs and heart have required several operations,” Hamid Mohammadi said. “I’m not worried about her being arrested; she has been arrested many times. What worries me most is the physical and psychological pressure she may face, which could worsen her health complications.”
Mohammadi won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her two-decade-long fight for human rights in Iran and her support for the 2022-2023 protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman. She has consistently predicted the eventual downfall of Iran’s clerical system, which has governed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The protest movement demanding women’s right to dress freely and calling for broader political change was eventually suppressed by an intense government crackdown, drawing condemnation from the international community.
In her birthday message to her twins, Mohammadi wrote: “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
