By Prosper Mene
Iranian security forces on Friday violently rearrested 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi and at least eight other activists during a memorial ceremony in Mashhad for prominent human-rights lawyer Khosrow Alikordi, who died under suspicious circumstances earlier this month.
Mohammadi, 53, had been on temporary medical release from Tehranโs notorious Evin prison since December 2024. Witnesses and family members said plainclothes officers beat her on the legs, pulled her by the hair, and dragged her away before bundling her and the others into vehicles and taking them to an unknown location.
Among those detained was Sepideh Gholian, a well-known labour and womenโs rights activist who had previously been imprisoned with Mohammadi in Evin. The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (Hengaw) described the arrests as โviolentโ and said the detaineesโ whereabouts remain unknown.
The memorial marked the traditional seventh day after the death of Alikordi, 45, a lawyer who represented defendants arrested during Iranโs 2022โ2023 โWoman, Life, Freedomโ protests. His body was discovered in his office on 5 December. Rights groups, including Norway-based Iran Human Rights in Iran, have demanded an independent investigation, citing โserious suspicion of state murder.โ
Video verified by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) shows Mohammadi, without the mandatory hijab, addressing a crowd of mourners. Standing on a vehicle and holding a microphone, she led chants of โLong live Iran,โ โWe fight, we die, we take back Iran,โ and โDeath to the dictator.โ
Mohammadiโs Paris-based husband, Taghi Rahmani, and her brother Hamid Mohammadi, who lives in Oslo, both confirmed the arrests. โThey beat her legs and dragged her by the hair,โ Hamid Mohammadi told AFP. He expressed less concern about the arrest itself , โshe has been arrested many timesโย than about the likely impact on her already fragile health after years of medical complications in prison, including lung and heart problems that required surgery.
Mohammadi has spent much of the past decade behind bars for her non-violent advocacy of womenโs rights and opposition to the death penalty. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2023 for her decades-long struggle against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight for human rights and freedom for all. Her teenage twin children accepted the prize in Oslo on her behalf; she has not seen them in eleven years and is permanently banned from leaving the country.
Even during her brief release, Mohammadi continued to defy authorities by appearing in public without a headscarf, addressing international conferences by video link, and meeting activists across Iran.
In a message last month marking her childrenโs 19th birthday, she wrote: โWhile the authorities stamp the word โpermanentโ on our documents, they themselves live each day in fear of the inevitable fall that will come at the hands of the people of Iran.โ
Supporters fear the new arrest signals that even temporary medical releases will no longer protect prominent dissidents from swift re-imprisonment when they continue public acts of defiance.
As of publication, Iranian authorities have made no official statement on the arrests or on the circumstances surrounding Khosrow Alikordiโs death.
