Iranian activist and Nobel Peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi sentenced to further year in prison

Narges Mohammadi, Iran’s most prominent human rights activist and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been sentenced to another year in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, her lawyer said Tuesday.

Jailed for most of the past two decades, Mohammadi was sentenced to a further stretch in prison by authorities who found her guilty of carrying out “propaganda activities against the regime,” Mostafa Nili, her lawyer, announced on social media.

According to Nili, the Iranian regime cited statements Mohammadi made concerning Iranian student and journalist Dina Ghalibaf, who was arrested in April after she publicly claimed to have been sexually assaulted by members of Iran’s morality police.

The authorities also cited a letter Mohammadi wrote calling on Iranians to boycott parliamentary elections back in February and the activist’s correspondence with Swedish and Norwegian parliaments.

In the past three years, Mohammadi has undergone six trials in revolutionary and criminal courts, resulting in a total sentence of 13 years and three months in prison, 154 lashes, exile, and four months of street cleaning, Nili said.

Her sentence was most recently extended in January, when she was handed an additional 15 months in prison after being charged with “spreading propaganda” against the Islamic Republic regime, her family said.

But incarceration has not impeded Mohammadi’s activism: The 52-year-old recently published a letter calling for an end to the war in Gaza. In the letter, Mohammadi condemned an Israeli strike on a refugee camp in Rafah that killed over 45 Palestinians.

From her cell, Mohammadi has also remained committed to amplifying the cause of Iranian women who have staged numerous protests in a bid to resist the regime’s mandatory hijab rule.

Iran was rocked by nationwide protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police after being arrested for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly.

Mohammadi was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”

Mohammadi’s teenage twins – Ali Rahmani and Kiana – accepted the award on her behalf and delivered the Nobel lecture in Oslo, Norway’s capital, paying tribute to the Iranian people’s determination to “dismantle” the “despotism and obstruction” of the Islamic Republic’s regime.

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