Narges Mohammadi

Background

Mohammadi was born on 21 April 1972 in Zanjan, Iran to an Iranian Azerbaijani family and grew up in Karaj and the Kurdish cities of Qorveh and Oshnaviyeh. She attended Qazvin International University, receiving a degree in physics, and became a professional engineer. During her university career, she wrote articles supporting women's rights in the student newspaper and was arrested at two meetings of the political student group fa ("Enlightened Student Group"). She was also active in a mountain climbing group but was later banned from joining climbs due to her political activities.

Mohammadi went on to work as a journalist for several reformist newspapers and published a book of political essays titled The reforms, the Strategy and the Tactics. In 2003, she joined the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi; she later became the organization's vice president.

In 1999, she married fellow pro-reform journalist Taghi Rahmani, who was soon arrested for the first time. Rahmani moved to France in 2012 after serving 14 years of prison sentences, while Mohammadi remained to continue her human rights work. Mohammadi and Rahmani have two children, twins.

As other thinkers exploring the idea of Neo-Shariatism in the 1990s, they advanced a view of governance that "rejected the concept of an Islamic state and advocated (instead) a secular, or urfi, democracy".

Imprisonment

Mohammadi was first arrested in 1998 for her criticisms of the Iranian government and spent a year in prison.

In July 2011, Mohammadi was prosecuted again On 26 April, she was arrested to begin her sentence.

The sentence was protested by the British Foreign Office, which called it "another sad example of the Iranian authorities' attempts to silence brave human rights defenders." Reporters Without Borders issued an appeal on Mohammadi's behalf on the ninth anniversary of photographer Zahra Kazemi's death in Evin Prison, stating that Mohammadi was a prisoner whose life was "in particular danger." In July 2012, an international group of lawmakers called for her release, including US Senator Mark Kirk, former Canadian Attorney General Irwin Cotler, UK MP Denis MacShane, Australian MP Michael Danby, Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein, and Lithuanian MP Emanuelis Zingeris. On 31 July 2012, Mohammadi was released from prison.

On 31 October 2014, Mohammadi made a speech at the gravesite of Sattar Beheshti, stating, "How is it that the Parliament Members are suggesting a Plan for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, but nobody spoke up two years ago when an innocent human being by the name of Sattar Beheshti died under torture in the hands of his interrogator?" The video of her speech quickly went viral on social media networks, resulting in Evin Prison court summoning her.

On 5 May 2015, Mohammadi was once again arrested on the basis of new charges. Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced her to ten years' imprisonment on the charge of "founding an illegal group" in reference to Legam (the Campaign for Step by Step Abolition of the Death Penalty), five years for "assembly and collusion against national security," a year for "propaganda against the system" for her interviews with international media and her March 2014 meeting with the EU's then High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton. In January 2019, Mohammadi began a hunger strike with the detained British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Evin Prison to protest being denied access to medical care. In July 2020, she showed symptoms of a COVID-19 infection, from which she appeared to have recovered by August. On 8 October 2020, Mohammadi was released from prison.

In March 2021, Mohammadi penned the foreword to the Iran Human Rights Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran:

In May 2021, Branch 1188 of Criminal Court Two in Tehran sentenced Mohammadi to two and a half years in prison, 80 lashes, and two separate fines for charges including "spreading propaganda against the system". Four months later, she received a summon to begin serving this sentence, which she did not respond to as she considered the conviction unjust.

On 16 November 2021, Mohammadi was arrested in Karaj, Alborz, while attending a memorial for , who was killed by Iranian security forces during nationwide protests in November 2019. Her arrest was condemned as arbitrary by Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights.

In December 2022, during the Mahsa Amini protests, the BBC published a report by Mohammadi detailing the sexual and physical abuse of detained women. In January 2023, she gave a report from prison detailing the condition of women in Evin Prison, including a list of 58 prisoners and the interrogation process and tortures they have gone through. 57 of these women have spent 8350 days in total under solitary confinement. 56 of these women are sentenced to 3300 months in total.

Mohammadi has been an outspoken critic of solitary confinement, calling it "White Torture" in her 2022 book of the same name. White Torture was translated into German as Frauen! Leben! Freiheit! ("Women! Life! Freedom!") in 2023. In September 2023, she supported Mehdi Yarrahi after his arrest for the protest song "Roosarito".

In May 2024, Mohammadi announced that she is facing fresh charges of offences against the state of Iran. She was granted a temporary leave from prison in December 2024.

According to the BBC, in December she was released from jail for three weeks to have medical treatment following surgery a month before on a potentially cancerous bone lesion. In January 2025, she announced that she had finished writing her autobiography and was writing a book on abuses and sexual harassment against women detained in Iran.

In July 2025 the Norwegian Nobel Committee reported that Mohammadi had been threatened with "physical elimination" by Iran.

On 12 December 2025, Mohammadi was rearrested while attending a memorial ceremony for a deceased human rights lawyer Khosrow Alikordi in Mashhad. On 15 December 2025 it was reported that following her brutal arrest that involved blows to the head and neck, she was hospitalized twice in the emergency room.

January 2026 public statement

On 28 January 2026, the Narges Mohammadi Human Rights Foundation, along with several other Iranian intellectuals, including Amirsalar Davoudi, Hatam Ghaderi, Abolfazl Ghadyani, Abdollah Momeni, Mohammad Najafi, Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rasoulof, Nasrin Sotoudeh, and Sedigheh Vasmaghi, published a statement on Instagram asserting that the 2026 Iran massacres were a crime against humanity, accusing Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei of holding principal responsibility.

Honors and awards

Awards received by Mohammadi:

• 2009: Alexander Langer Award, named for peace activist Alexander Langer. The award carried a 10,000-euro honorarium.
• 2011: Per Anger Prize, the Swedish government's international award for human rights
• 2016: Human Rights Award of the City of Weimar
• 2018: Andrei Sakharov Prize from the American Physical Society
• 2022: Recognition as one of BBC's 100 inspiring and influential women
• 2023: Olof Palme Prize from the Swedish Olof Palme Foundation, jointly with Marta Chumalo and Eren Keskin
• 2023: PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award from PEN America
• 2023: UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, Shared with Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi.
• 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". Four other Iranian women were also candidates: Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohamadi, Masih Alinejad, and Nargest Setude. The President of the United States congratulated her and mentioned Armita Geravand. The Iranian High Council for Human Rights condemned the prize for awarding "a criminal".
  • The text of her Nobel Prize speech, which was smuggled out of Evin prison in Iran, was read at the awards ceremony in Oslo by her teenage children, Ali and Kiana Rahmani.
• 2024: Cinema for Peace Honorary Award.

In 2010, when Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi won the Felix Ermacora Human Rights Award she dedicated it to Mohammadi. "This courageous woman deserves this award more than I do," Ebadi said.

Works

• White Torture: Interviews with Iranian Women Prisoners. OneWorld Publications, 2022.

References

References

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