Family and Norwegian Nobel Committee plead for transfer of jailed laureate to her dedicated medical team after a 'catastrophic deterioration' in prison
Imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who was rushed from jail to a hospital in northwestern Iran last week, urgently requires specialised medical care for a life-threatening heart condition, her brother said, warning that the regional facility now treating her cannot provide the level of care she needs.
“She is suffering from terrible headaches, nausea and chest pain. That is what we are very worried about — her heart,” Hamidreza Mohammadi told Reuters in an interview from his home in Norway. He said the provincial hospital in Zanjan, where his sister was admitted on Friday, was not equipped to manage her deteriorating condition.
Specialists, he said, “all believe that her life is in danger and she needs at least one month away from prison conditions to be treated properly.” He added: “She needs her own doctors who have performed the operations before and know exactly what is wrong with her.”
Both Mohammadi’s family and the Norwegian Nobel Committee have publicly appealed to the Iranian authorities to transfer the 53-year-old laureate to her dedicated medical team in Tehran. So far, those requests have been refused.
Mohammadi was moved from prison to the hospital on Friday after what the Narges Mohammadi Foundation described as a “catastrophic deterioration” in her physical condition. According to the foundation, she experienced two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis after fainting twice inside Zanjan prison earlier that day. She remained in a cardiac care unit over the weekend, with her blood pressure fluctuating dangerously and treatment limited to oxygen therapy and efforts to stabilise her.
The crisis follows months of mounting concern about her health. On 24 March, fellow inmates found Mohammadi unconscious in her cell. A prison doctor told her she had likely suffered a heart attack, and she has reported persistent chest pain and breathing difficulties since. Her lawyers say she has been repeatedly denied transfer to a hospital or to her cardiologist. She previously underwent emergency heart surgery in 2022 and has had three angioplasty procedures.
A medical official in Zanjan reportedly recommended a one-month suspension of her sentence to allow proper treatment, but the local public prosecutor referred the decision to his counterpart in Tehran. “My family in Iran is doing everything they can,” Hamidreza Mohammadi said in an earlier audio message released through the foundation. “But the prosecutors in Zanjan are blocking everything.”
Mohammadi was already serving a 13-year, nine-month sentence on charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against the government when she was rearrested on 12 December 2024 in Mashhad, after speaking at a memorial for a fellow activist. In February, a Revolutionary Court added a further seven years to her term — a verdict her supporters say was issued with little chance to mount a defence.
Despite the worsening prognosis, her brother insisted she has not been broken by years of detention. “The thing that makes Narges so special is that she has broken this cliché of a prisoner who has been long in prison and is broken and sad,” he said. “She has always been energetic and she has refused to be broken by the regime.”
Rights groups around the world have echoed the family’s call, urging Tehran to allow her immediate transfer and, ultimately, her release on medical grounds. For now, her family says, it is a fight to keep her alive.
About Narges Mohammadi
Narges Mohammadi, 53, is an Iranian human rights defender, journalist and engineer-turned-activist who has spent much of the past two decades in and out of Iranian prisons. She is vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, founded by fellow Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, and has campaigned tirelessly for women’s rights, against compulsory hijab laws, and for the abolition of the death penalty in Iran. In October 2023, while imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin Prison, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — becoming the fifth laureate to receive the honour from behind bars. By the time of the award, she had reportedly been arrested 13 times, convicted five times, and sentenced to a cumulative 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. She is also a leading voice of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that erupted across Iran following the 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini. Mohammadi is married to journalist and activist Taghi Rahmani, who lives in exile in France with the couple’s twin children, Ali and Kiana, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on their mother’s behalf.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons