Iran: Nobel Laureate Mohammadi Given More Jail Time

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Facts

  • 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to an additional 15-month jail term, with the Revolutionary Court ordering her to spend two years in exile outside Tehran. After being freed she will not be allowed to travel abroad, own a cell phone, or join any political or social groups for two years.1
  • Her family claimed in an Instagram post on Monday that this latest verdict — on charges of spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran — was handed down on Dec. 19 in a court session that Mohammadi refused to attend.2
  • She said she boycotted the trial — her first since winning the Nobel Peace Prize — because of the influence of security institutions and extrajudicial elements on the judicial system. She also claimed the Revolutionary Court is illegal and carries out secret show trials where the accused are denied a fair defense.3
  • This is the fifth conviction since March 2021 faced by the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist, who has been held in Tehran's Evin Prison. Her sentences now total 12 years and three months in prison, plus 154 lashes.4
  • According to the international human rights NGO Front Line Defenders, a collective punishment that has been in place since last week has banned Mohammadi and other female inmates from receiving family visits and books, as well as from making phone calls, until Jan. 27.5
  • Meanwhile, Mizan news agency — affiliated with the Iranian judiciary — reported on Sunday that a hijab case has been lodged against two female journalists, Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi, who were temporarily released on bail from Evin Prison a day earlier for appearing without the mandatory headscarf.6

Sources: 1BBC News, 2FOX News, 3Iran International, 4Iran Wire, 5Front Line Defenders and 6Al Jazeera.

Narratives

  • Anti-Iran narrative, as provided by The New York Times. Tehran has long sought to silence Narges Mohammadi through intimidation and punishment, but to no avail. She has never refrained from speaking out against the authoritarian clerical regime, even while imprisoned and suffering health problems. Given that Iran's judicial system is anything but independent, it's no surprise that the Nobel Winner has been slapped with a sentence that is, effectively, a political statement.
  • Pro-Iran narrative, as provided by PressTV. Once a mostly unknown anti-Iranian troublemaker mercenary, Narges Mohammadi came into the international spotlight for her subversive activities in the 2022 West-backed riots that sought to create divisions within Iran and promote separatist terrorism in Baluchistan and Kurdistan. That a biased and political prize was awarded to her doesn't make Mohammadi exempt from abiding by the rule of law.

Predictions