Iran releases Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi on bail

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - PARIS — Iranian authorities have released Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi on bail following growing alarm over her health and she has already been transferred to Tehran for medical treatment, her supporters said.

After 10 days of hospitalisation in Zanjan in northern Iran where she had been serving her sentence, Mohammadi "has been granted a sentence suspension on heavy bail", her foundation said in a statement.

It added she had been transferred by ambulance to a hospital in Tehran "to be treated by her own medical team".

Her supporters had last week warned that Mohammadi, who won the 2023 prize in recognition of her decades of campaigning for human rights in Iran, was at risk of dying in prison after suffering two suspected heart attacks behind bars in Zanjan.

"Narges Mohammadi's life hangs in the balance," her Paris-based husband Taghi Rahmani said in a statement.

Her foundation said Mohammadi needed specialized care and added that "we must ensure she never returns to prison to face the 18 years remaining on her sentence".
Her Iranian lawyer Mostafa Nili, writing on X, confirmed she had been transferred to Tehran earlier Sunday "following an order halting her sentence for medical treatment".

Mohammadi, 54, who has spent much of the past two decades in and out of prison for her activism, was arrested most recently in December after denouncing the Islamic republic at a funeral for a lawyer.

Mohammadi's twin teenage children Ali and Kiana Rahmani, who live and study in Paris, have now not seen their mother for over a decade. They received the Nobel Prize on her behalf while she was in jail.