Jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi wins Nobel Peace Prize

Iran’s jailed women’s rights advocate Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The award-making committee said the prize honoured all those behind recent unprecedented demonstrations in Iran and called for the release of Mohammadi, 51, who has campaigned for both women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty, Reuters reported.

“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran, with its undisputed leader, Narges Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

“If the Iranian authorities make the right decision, they will release her so that she can be present to receive this honour (in December), which is what we primarily hope for.”

There was no immediate official reaction from Tehran, which calls the protests Western-led subversion.

But semi-official news agency Fars said Mohammadi had “received her prize from the Westerners” after making headlines “due to her acts against the national security.”

Mohammadi is currently serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison amounting to about 12 years imprisonment, according to the Front Line Defenders rights organisation, one of the many periods she has been detained behind bars.

Charges include spreading propaganda against the state.

She is the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organisation led by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the 122-year-old prize and the first one since Maria Ressa of the Philippines won the award in 2021 jointly with Russia’s Dmitry Muratov.

“This Nobel Prize will embolden Narges’ fight for human rights, but more importantly, this is in fact a prize for the ‘women, life and freedom’ movement,” Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani told Reuters at his home in Paris.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or around $1 million, will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.

Past winners range from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela.