Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate sentenced to another 6 months in prison

Nobel Peace Prize winner 2023 Narges Mohammadi began a hunger strike in her Iranian prison in protest at limits on medical care for her and other inmates and the obligation for women to wear the hijab in the Islamic republic, her family said on November 6, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Narges Mohammadi Foundation via AFP

“Iranian authorities have issued an additional six-month prison sentence against Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi,” a group campaigning for the activist said.

The Free Narges Coalition said in a statement on Thursday (October 24, 2024) that Mohammadi was sentenced on October 19 to an additional six months in prison on the charge of “disobeying and resisting orders.”

According to the statement, the charge was brought after Ms. Mohammadi staged a protest against the execution of another political prisoner in the women’s ward of Evin Prison on August 6, 2024.

Ms. Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi in 2003. Ms. Mohammadi (52) has kept up her activism despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and years behind bars.

She is being held at Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, which houses political prisoners and those with Western ties. She already had been serving a 30-month sentence, to which 15 more months were added in January. Iran’s Government has not acknowledged her additional sentencing.

The latest order reflects the Iranian theocracy’s anger that she was awarded the Nobel prize in October 2023 for years of activism despite a decades-long government campaign targeting her.

Ms. Mohammadi was a leading light for nationwide, women-led protests sparked by the death last year of a 22-year-old woman in police custody that has grown into one of the most intense challenges to Iran’s theocratic Government. That woman, Mahsa Amini, had been detained for allegedly not wearing her headscarf to the liking of authorities.

The statement demanded Ms. Mohammadi’s unconditional release, saying her health situation has deteriorated drastically during her long incarceration and she is suffering from heart disease.