Iranian authorities beat the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi so severely after detaining her last week that she was taken twice to an emergency room for her injuries, according to a statement released by her family on Monday.
Security forces detained Ms. Mohammadi, an outspoken human rights campaigner in Iran, along with several other prominent activists, at a memorial service last Friday in northeastern Iran. Authorities confirmed the arrests, but her family said that for days they were in the dark as to her whereabouts or her condition.
On Monday, the family posted a statement on Ms. Mohammadi’s social media accounts, saying she had managed to reach them for a very brief call. The family said she told them she was repeatedly beaten on the head and neck as she was detained. Her assailants vowed to send her “mother into mourning,” a comment the family described as a “direct death threat.”
Ms. Mohammadi told the family she was accused of cooperating with the Israeli government. Such a charge could be of grave significance for her. In the wake of the brief war Israel waged against Iran last June, authorities have expanded the use of the death penalty for charges of collaboration with Israel.
Iranian authorities did not respond to a request for comment. But the general prosecutor in Mashhad, the city where she was detained, told the state news agency Tasnim that Ms. Mohammedi and the other detainees were “being held in a lawful detention facility with their citizens’ rights respected” as a legal investigation was conducted.
The prosecutor, Hassan Hemmatifar, said last Friday that “the legal process of the case will continue with precision, speed and decisiveness, and further updates will be communicated to the public.”
According to Ms. Mohammadi’s family, she told them she was twice sent to an emergency room for treatment for the blows she received.
“She emphasized that she does not even know which security authority is currently detaining her, and that no explanation has been given in this regard,” the family wrote. “Her physical condition at the time of the call was not good, and she appeared unwell.”
Ms. Mohammadi and ten other prominent activists were arrested during a funeral for the human rights lawyer Khosrow Ali Kordi, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran. Mr. Ali Kordi’s family and rights groups had already raised questions about the circumstances of his death, saying he may have been killed.
Mr. Kordi’s brother, Javad Ali Kordi, who is also a lawyer, used Instagram Live to stream what was happening at the memorial, and was arrested hours later, the rights group said.
Condemnation over the arrests has poured in from human rights groups, the European Union and the Nobel committee. The 2025 Nobel Peace laureate, María Corina Machado, called for the “immediate and unconditional release of Narges Mohammadi and all others detained at the memorial.”
The arrests stand in sharp contrast to the government’s growing tolerance in recent months of social freedoms, like public singalong concerts or women appearing in public without head scarves.
Authorities have shown no such leniency toward political opposition — and have instead been cracking down on dissidents, journalists and academics critical of the government.
Ms. Mohammadi, 53, has been arrested and imprisoned repeatedly 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 serving a 10-year prison sentence, the Norwegian 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.”
She was furloughed from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison last December after having surgery. But in July, she told the Norwegian Nobel Committee, “I have been directly and indirectly threatened with ‘physical elimination’ by agents of the regime.”
Her imprisonment and threats have not dissuaded her from pursuing her cause. At the memorial last Friday, she gave an impassioned speech to a crowd, where video posted on social media showed her leading them in chants of the names of slain and jailed rights activists, and refrains of “Long live Iran.”
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