Iran sentences Nobel Peace Prize winner to another 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, according to CNN.

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.

Nili said that 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.

Mohammadi has spent much of the past two decades in and out of jail for her campaign against the mandatory hijab for women and the death penalty.

She is currently behind bars at the notorious Evin Prison for the recent nationwide protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in 2022.

Her death sparked several months of anti-government protests throughout Iran. The government crackdown on the demonstrations that followed Amini’s death resulted in hundreds of people being killed, including dozens of security personnel, and thousands arrested.

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.

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.”

Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mohammadi, claiming the move was biased and amounted to a “politicization” of the prize.