Jailed Iranian Nobel winner hit with new sentence: family

An Iranian court has sentenced 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi to an additional sentence of over one year in prison on charges of spreading propaganda against the Islamic republic while behind bars, her family said on Monday.

The Revolutionary Court sentenced Mohammadi to 15 months in prison after a trial that she boycotted, her family added in their statement.

She was also ordered to spend two years in exile outside Tehran, given a two-year travel ban, and a two-year ban on using a smartphone, restrictions that would come into force after she is eventually freed.

The family said this was Mohammadi’s fifth conviction since March 2021, with sentences now amounting to 12 years and three months of imprisonment, 154 lashes, two years of exile, and various social and political restrictions.

The family denounced a verdict that it said resembled a “political statement” that emphasised accusations that “she repeatedly incites and encourages public and individual opinions against the Islamic regime to sow chaos and disturbances”.

Mohammadi, whose family accepted the 2023 Nobel prize in Oslo on her behalf in December, was given the award in recognition of her campaigning for human rights in Iran.

She has spent much of the past two decades in and out of jail and began serving her most recent sentence in November 2021.

But behind the bars of Tehran’s Evin prison she has not let up her rights campaigning, accusing the authorities of systematic violations, and in particular criticising their use of the death penalty.

A vehement opponent of the obligatory hijab in the Islamic republic, she has also defied rules about wearing the headscarf inside prison.

This, according to her family, has resulted in Mohammadi being further punished, notably by being deprived of the right to make phone calls.