Iran has sentenced prominent human rights defender Narges Mohammadi to another eight years and two months in prison as well as 74 lashes, her husband says.
Paris-based Taghi Rahmani said on Twitter on January 26 that Mohammadi had called the family from prison on January 25, and informed them that she was also banned from social-media activities and from giving interviews for two years.
Rahmani said the sentence, which also includes a two-year exile from the capital, Tehran, was preliminary.
Mohammadi was arrested in November 2021 after she attended the memorial for a man killed by Iranian security forces during nationwide protests in November 2019. Rahmani later said his wife stood accused of “spying for Saudi Arabia.”
Last week, she was transferred from Tehran’s Evin prison to the Gharchak women’s prison near Tehran.
Before imprisonment, Mohammadi was the vice president of the banned Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran.
She has been repeatedly jailed and harassed by Iranian authorities.
In May 2021, a Tehran court sentenced her to 2 1/2 years in prison, 80 lashes, and two separate fines on charges that include “spreading propaganda against the system.”
In 2016, the activist was sentenced to 16 years in prison on charges that rights groups said were solely related to her human rights activities.
Following her release from prison in October 2020 after her sentenced was reduced, she continued to criticize human rights abuses in Iran, and accused prison authorities of sexually harassing her and other female prisoners.
In March 2021, Mohammadi was among a group of activists who filed an official complaint against the use of solitary confinement against political detainees.
A journalist and an engineer, she has been awarded several prestigious prizes, including the American Physical Society’s Andrei Sakharov Prize in 2018 for outstanding leadership in upholding human rights.
