Imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner in critical condition

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi's daughter Kiana Rahmani, son Ali Rahmani, and chairman of the Nobel Committee Norwegian Berit Reiss Andersen attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony at Oslo City Hall on December 10, 2023 in Oslo, Norway. Rune Hellestad/Getty Images Europe

Rune Hellestad/Getty Images Europe

The Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Iran, has been hospitalized in critical condition after collapsing and losing consciousness in jail. The 54-year-old Mohammadi, who suffers from chronic heart and other health issues, is experiencing a "catastrophic deterioration" in her health, according to a statement from her foundation released Friday.

Mohammadi was moved from prison to intensive care Friday at a hospital in the city of Zanjan, a provincial capital northwest of Tehran. According to her foundation's statement, her family and lawyer have requested that she be transferred to specialist care in Tehran upon her medical team's advice, but authorities have refused to allow her to be moved. In March, she suffered a heart attack and lost consciousness in prison, but according to her husband, government authorities declined to take her to any hospital for treatment.

In December 2024, she had been granted a medical furlough from prison due to her ongoing poor health. While still on furlough in December 2025, she spoke out against the Iranian regime at a funeral of a fellow activist, and was arrested again. Mohammadi was then sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of threatening national security. In February, she was sentenced to an additional seven and a half years.

Mohammadi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her work on women's rights, her activism against the Iranian government's use of torture and sexual violence, and for her advocacy to abolish the death penalty in Iran. At that time, she had already been arrested 13 times, convicted five times, and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

While she was imprisoned in the most notorious jail in Iran, Tehran's Evin Prison, she became one of the foremost activists in Iran's "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement.

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In their 2025 book For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising, journalists Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy recount one of Mohammadi's recent fights from prison, in which she refused to wear the mandatory hijab while she was being transferred from prison to a hospital to be treated for her ongoing ailments. "The judiciary system eventually had to give in after she and several female prisoners went on a hunger strike for three days. Only then did she go to the hospital to have heart surgery," Jamalpour and Tabrizy write.

During the ongoing war with the U.S. and Israel, Iran has continued to repress dissidents. According to a statement released Thursday by the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in New York, the Iranian government has hanged at least 22 political prisoners, including three minors, within the past six weeks. Most of these executions were carried out secretly and without notice to the prisoners' families or lawyers, according to the CHRI.