An Iranian court has penalised leading human rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi to eight years of prison for allegedly bashing her husband, her husband declared on January 23, following her sudden arrest in November 2021.
Her husband “Taghi Rahmani”, who belonged and lived in France, wrote on Twitter that the punishment was handed out after a hearing that survived only five minutes.
The details of both the leading and the case against her remain unclear.
An associate of Nobel Peace Prize-winning campaigner Shirin Ebadi, who is now not at all live in Iran, Mohammadi has been repeatedly jailed by the Iranian authorities over the past few years.
However, they released her from detention in October 2020, but then suddenly they again arrested her next month of her detention and arrested her in Karaj outside Tehran while she was attending a memorial for a man who was killed during the nationwide protest in November 2019.
Amnesty International at the time charged Mohammadi’s arrest as a “random” arrest and portrayed her as a prisoner of conscience targetted only for her peaceful human rights activities.
Mohammadi, who did a lengthy campaign against the use of the death penalty in Iran, had been working with families desiring justice for their loved ones before her latest arrest, which they said were killed by security forces in the 2019 protests.
Even while out of prison, she had in May 2021 been handed a sentence of 80 lashes and 30 months in jail on a leader of propaganda against the Islamic system of Iran.
Activists have criticised what they see as improved quelling in Iran over the last months, including the jailing of all campaigners and their more prominent use of the death penalty.
Many prominent prisoners have died in prison, such as the well-known and famous poet “Baktash Abtin.”
Another top rights defender serving a lengthy sentence in Iran is a prize-winning lawyer “Nasrin Sotoudeh” who defended women and was arrested for protesting against the requirement for Iranian women to wear hijab.
However, she is currently believed to become out of jail on medical leave; supporters fear that she may be at risk of being imminently returned to prison.