Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi was taken to hospital after being beaten during her arrest last week, according to her family.
The 53-year-old human rights activist told them in a phone call on Sunday that she had been taken to the emergency room twice after being “attacked by plainclothes officers with violent and repeated baton blows to the head and neck,” according to the Narges Foundation.
There was no comment from Iranian authorities, but they said she was arrested for making “provocative remarks” at a memorial ceremony in the city of Mashhad on Friday.
The Nobel committee and award-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi are among those calling for his release.
Ms. Mohammadi, vice president of the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran, was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her activism against the oppression of women in Iran and for the promotion of human rights.
She spent more than 10 years of her life in prison. As of 2021, she has been serving a 13-year prison sentence for “propaganda activity against the state” and “collusion against state security”, which she has denied.
In December 2024, she was granted a temporary release from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison on medical grounds.
She continued to campaign while undergoing treatment.
On Friday, she delivered a speech at a memorial ceremony in Mashhad for Khosrow Alikordi, a human rights activist and lawyer who was found dead earlier this month in what human rights groups called “suspicious” circumstances.
According to the Narges Foundation, eyewitnesses cited by Ms. Mohammadi’s family said she was attacked by around 15 plainclothes officers at the memorial, and that some were seen pulling her hair and beating her with batons and batons.
On Sunday evening, Ms. Mohammadi briefly called her family and told them that “the intensity of the beating was so severe, so violent and repeated that she was taken to the hospital emergency room on two occasions,” according to a statement.
“She stressed that she did not even know which security authority was currently detaining her and that no explanation had been given in this regard. Her physical condition at the time of the call was not good and she did not appear well,” the statement added.
The Narges Foundation quoted Ms. Mohammadi as saying that she had been accused of “cooperation with the Israeli government” and that it had made death threats, telling her: “We are going to put your mother into mourning.”
The statement said two other activists arrested during the memorial ceremony, Sepideh Gholian and Pouran Nazemi, were also beaten by plainclothes officers.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters on Saturday that Ms Mohammadi was among 39 people arrested.
He said she and Khosrow Alikordi’s brother, Javad, encouraged those present “to chant slogans against norms” and to “disturb the peace.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Friday it was deeply concerned by what it called the “brutal arrest” of Mohammadi and called on Iranian authorities to “guarantee her safety and integrity, and release her unconditionally.”
Jafar Panahi, fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and more than a dozen other activists said in a joint statement that what happened at Alikordi’s memorial ceremony “was a stark reflection of the worrying state of freedom and security and, therefore, the ineffectiveness and lack of accountability of the authorities in today’s Iran.”
