The relatives of 2023 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Narges Mohammadi are calling for her urgent freedom from Iranian custody following what they describe as a dramatic worsening of her medical situation.
Mohammadi was recently moved from her prison cell to a medical facility after her family’s organization reported a “catastrophic deterioration in her health condition” following months of imprisonment without proper medical attention.
Her family’s foundation stated the hospital transfer occurred “after 140 days of arbitrary detention and the persistent denial of specialized healthcare.”
The activist, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while being held at Evin Prison in Tehran, has experienced serious medical problems over recent months. Her foundation announced in February that she had started refusing food, and by March they declared her situation “critical” following what doctors believed was a cardiac episode.
The foundation reports that Mohammadi was denied medical care throughout this entire period.
Both the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and Mohammadi’s relatives are demanding Iranian officials free her so she can get treatment from her personal physicians, cautioning that “her life remains in danger.”
Speaking to the BBC on Saturday, her brother Hamidreza Mohammadi explained that her current health crisis involves multiple serious conditions: “Her current problems include low blood pressure and a heart attack, but her previous conditions, such as pulmonary embolism (…) and having undergone stenting and angiography, make any treatment by the doctors in Zanjan effectively impossible.”
Throughout her life, Mohammadi has been taken into custody 13 separate times and given prison terms totaling 31 years plus 154 lashes, her foundation reports.
Starting in 2021, she began serving a 13-year prison term for allegedly engaging in “propaganda activity against the state” and “collusion against state security,” accusations she has rejected.
International groups and her family continue to focus attention on her situation, pressing for her release due to growing worries about her medical condition.
