No Contact With Iran Nobel Winner Since Arrest: Supporters Call For Her Immediate Release

Days after the Iranian authorities arrested Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, her supporters on Sunday called for the government to release the campaigner and dozens of others arrested alongside her.

The 2023 Nobel Prize awardee was “violently detained” by security and police forces on Friday during a memorial ceremony for Khosrow Alikordi, a lawyer recently found dead in his office, her Paris-based Narges foundation said.

Following the detainment, the Norwegian Nobel Committee issued a statement denouncing the “brutal arrest” of Mohammadi and other activists and called for her immediate release.

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee calls on the Iranian authorities to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity,

and to release her without conditions,” the five-member body said in the statement issued by its chairman. “The Committee stands in solidarity with Narges Mohammadi and all those in Iran who work peacefully for human rights, the rule of law, and freedom of expression.”

AFP quoted Mohammadi’s foundation saying no phone call has been made by been made by her since her arrest and “only a limited number of those arrested have been able to contact their families”.

It also expressed “deep concern for the physical and psychological well-being of all detainees and calls for their immediate and unconditional release”.

It further stated that the foundation has been informed that her case had been referred to the Mashhad revolutionary prosecutor and that she could be facing national security charges.

But the foundation said it had received no information over her “whereabouts or condition”.

According to CNN, Mohammadi has spent most of the past two decades as an inmate of Tehran’s Evin prison — notorious for detaining critics of the regime.

She has been sentenced to multiple prison terms totaling 36 years on charges that include acting against national security and spreading propaganda, the Narges Foundation added.