Iran activist sentenced to prison and 70 lashes, her husband says

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran has sentenced a prominent human rights activist to more than eight years prison, according to her husband.

Paris-based Taghi Rahmani tweeted Sunday that his wife, Narges Mohammadi, was tried in five minutes and sentenced to prison and 70 lashes. He has said she is prohibited from communicating and has no access to lawyers. Last week, she was sent to Gharchak prison near Tehran.

Authorities arrested Mohammadi in November after she attended a memorial for a victim of violent 2019 street protests. Rahmani said in December that his wife was accused of “spying for Saudi Arabia.”

Mohammadi has a long history of imprisonment, harsh sentences and international calls for reviews of her case.

In May, the European Union called on Iran to reconsider her sentence of 30 months in prison and 80 lashes for protesting the killing of demonstrators during the country’s 2019 unrest.

An EU spokesperson urged Iran to look into Mohammadi’s case under “applicable international human rights law and taking into account her deteriorating health condition.” Mohammadi confirmed her sentence at the time in an Instagram post, saying she did not “accept any of these sentences.”

In the post, Mohammadi said one of the charges against her was having a party and dancing in jail.

She was released in October 2020 after serving 8½ years in prison after her initial 10-year sentence was commuted. In that case, she was sentenced in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on charges including planning crimes to harm the security of Iran, spreading propaganda against the government, and forming and managing an illegal group.

Before her imprisonment, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran.

Mohammadi has been close to Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who founded the center. Ebadi left Iran after the disputed reelection of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which touched off unprecedented protests and harsh crackdowns by authorities.

In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the EU’s Andrei Sakharov Prize.