Iran hands Nobel winner fresh jail term - lawyer

Image source, Reuters

Image caption, Narges Mohammadi had denounced the trial as 鈥渦njust and farcical鈥
  • Author, David Gritten
  • Role, 大象传媒 News

A court in Iran has sentenced the jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi to an additional year in prison, her lawyer says.

The 52-year-old human rights activist was convicted of spreading 鈥減ropaganda against the system鈥 by a branch of Tehran鈥檚 Revolutionary Court, Mostafa Nili wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

He said the reasons cited by the court included 鈥渃omments about Ms Dina Qalibaf鈥, a student who alleged she was tortured and sexually assaulted by security forces, as well as her call to boycott March鈥檚 election and letters to Swedish and Norwegian MPs.

Ms Mohammadi had refused to attend the trial, denouncing it as 鈥渦njust and farcical鈥.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Iranian judiciary.

for 鈥減rotesting, exposing, and narrating sexual harassment and abuse by government officials鈥.

This had resulted in a 鈥渃umulative sentence of 13 years and three months in prison, 154 lashes, exile, and four months of street cleaning鈥, they added.

Ms Mohammadi was already serving a 10-year sentence at Tehran鈥檚 Evin prison, handed down in 2016, when she was awarded the Nobel prize last October for 鈥渉er fight against the oppression of women in Iran鈥.

Last month, she had demanded that her latest trial be held in public so that witnesses and survivors could testify to what she alleged were "the sexual assaults perpetrated by the Islamic Republic regime against women鈥.

She said the propaganda charge was a result of a statement she had made in support of Dina Qalibaf, a student at Tehran鈥檚 Beheshti University and a freelance journalist.

In April, as authorities intensified a crackdown on women flouting Iran鈥檚 mandatory hijab laws in the wake of the 2022 nationwide protests, .

In an audio recording released by her family, she called on women not to stay silent about abuse by security forces, but send their stories of "arrest, rape, harassment, humiliation and beatings" to her Instagram account.

The appeal, she said, was prompted by the 鈥渂ruises and experience of sexual abuse鈥 she had observed when Ms Qalibaf was brought to the women鈥檚 ward of Evin prison.

Ms Qalibaf was arrested a day after she posted an account on social media alleging that she had been subjected to electrical shocks by security forces and sexually assaulted by one officer at a Tehran metro station.

The judiciary-run Mizan news agency rejected Ms Qalibaf鈥檚 claims at the time. She was released on bail after two weeks in detention.

In December, a revolutionary court handed Ms Mohammadi an additional 15-month prison term after she was convicted in her absence of another charge of 鈥減ropaganda against the system鈥, her family said.

She was also banished from Tehran for two years, and banned from travelling abroad, owning a mobile phone, or being a member of political and social groups for the same period.