The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate and rights activist Narges Mohammadi was arrested on Friday in a raid at a memorial in the country’s east, according to the authorities and her family.
Security agents raided a mosque in the city of Mashhad where the ceremony was being held and detained Ms. Mohammadi along with at least nine other well-known activists, said Taghi Rahmani, Ms. Mohammadi’s husband, in a telephone interview.
“We don’t know where Narges and the rest of them are; we haven’t heard from them since they took them — no phone call, no clear answer from authorities,” said Mr. Rahmani, who lives in exile in Paris with the couple’s teenage children.
“We are extremely worried,” he continued.
The Nobel Committee said in a statement on Friday that it was “deeply concerned” by the arrests, and called on “the Iranian authorities to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions.”
Videos published by an Iranian news outlet showed security forces, dressed in black police uniforms, waving batons while seated outside the event on motorcycles. The crowd can be heard screaming and shouting curses at the officers as passing cars honk.
Ms. Mohammadi, 53, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of threatening national security for her decades of work promoting human rights, women’s rights and democracy in Iran. In 2023 while she was still imprisoned, the Nobel Committee awarded her the Peace Prize, saying it was a recognition of “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”
Ms. Mohammadi was furloughed from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison last December after receiving surgery.
Since her release, she has continued her activism. On Friday she had traveled from her home in Tehran with a group of fellow activists to attend a memorial service for the human rights lawyer Khosrow Ali Kordi, who was found dead last week. His family and rights groups have raised questions about the circumstances of his death, saying he may have been killed.
The top government official in Mashhad, Hassan Hosseini, confirmed to local news outlets that Ms. Mohammadi and a group of activists had been “temporarily arrested with an arrest warrant from the prosecutor and it was because they were chanting disruptive slogans.”
Among those also arrested were the women’s rights activists Sepideh Qolian, Pouran Nazemi and Alieh Motalebzadeh. Their arrests are part of a recent wave of crackdowns targeting political dissidents, journalists and professors critical of the government. That crackdown suggests that even as the Iranian state moves toward tolerating some social freedoms and changes led by women andyoung people, it intends to maintain an iron fist in the political realm.
Videos posted on Ms. Mohammadi’s social media page show her standing on top of a car, wearing a white jacket, with hair uncovered, delivering a fiery speech to a large crowd outside of the mosque. Waving her hands and speaking into a microphone, she leads the crowd into chanting the names of slain and jailed rights activists and refrains of “Long live Iran.”
“We are all brothers and sisters, we are all Iranians, and we stand united,” shouted Ms. Mohammadi to the crowd in one video from the event posted on social media. “We swear by the blood of our comrades, we are standing until the end.” The crowd chants with her.
A man next to her tries to quiet her, saying, please stop, they want to target you, videos showed. She dismisses him with a nod and carries on.
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting from London.
Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.
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