Iranian Nobel laureate in critical condition in prison

Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leading human rights activist, was transferred to a hospital in Zanjan after collapsing and losing consciousness on Friday, as reported by her family.

Mohammadi is currently in the hospital’s intensive care unit. But the judicial authorities have refused requests from her family and her lawyer to transfer her to a better-equipped hospital in Tehran, where she could be cared for by her cardiologist, according to a statement by the Narges Foundation and her husband, Taghi Rahmani, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

Rahmani said the family fears for her life and has pleaded for mercy from Iranian authorities. Iran’s mission to the United Nations said it had no comment on Mohammadi’s health situation.

“We are extremely worried about her; she has collapsed and lost consciousness several times, and her life is in danger,” Rahmani said in an interview from Paris, where he lives in exile with the couple’s children. “Our request is basic and urgent: send her to a hospital in Tehran immediately.”

Mohammadi’s health has been deteriorating rapidly for the past few months, but on Friday she experienced extreme pain in her chest and fainted, her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, said in a post on social media.

Mohammadi, known for her tireless pro-democracy activism, has spent much of her adult life in and out of prison in Iran’s authoritarian theocracy. She had been sentenced to 10 years on charges of threatening national security. But in February a court sentenced her to an additional seven and a half years because of her continued opposition to the government.

She was arrested again in December, while on a year-long furlough from prison because of her health, after she delivered a fiery speech critical of the government at the funeral of a fellow activist.

Judicial authorities jailed her in Zanjan, a city northwest of Tehran, where she has no family and where prison conditions are much worse than in Tehran. In late March, she had a heart attack and lost consciousness in prison and was refused proper medical care at a hospital.

In 2023, while she was imprisoned, the Nobel Committee awarded her the Peace Prize, noting “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”.

News.Az