Iran imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi may have had heart attack

Iran imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi may have suffered heart attack

Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi may have suffered a heart attack, a lawyer said Tuesday after reporting on a weekend visit to her in Zanjan Prison. The French lawyer Chirinne Ardakani said two of Mohammadi’s lawyers and her sister visited her in the northwestern Iranian prison on Sunday and that the visitors were shocked by how ill she appeared.

Ardakani said her colleagues reported that Mohammadi was very pale and had lost a lot of weight, and that they saw her with a nurse present throughout the visit. She also said she was briefed on what Mohammadi’s two Iranian lawyers told her after they went to the prison.

Ardakani said Mohammadi told the visitors that on March 24 she was unconscious for over an hour. She said that after a later examination at the prison’s clinic, a doctor told Mohammadi that she probably had had a heart attack.

After the episode, Ardakani said Mohammadi told her she had chest pain more than once a day and had breathing difficulties, adding that Mohammadi described her condition as very bad. Ardakani said Mohammadi has been denied transfer to a hospital or permission to visit her cardiologist, and she said a prison official was present throughout the brief visit by Mohammadi’s lawyers.

Mohammadi, 53, was arrested in December during a visit to the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad and sentenced to seven more years in prison, according to the lawyer’s account. Ardakani said Mohammadi had already been serving a sentence of 13 years and nine months on charges tied to alleged collusion against state security and alleged propaganda against Iran’s government prior to her detention on the Mashhad trip.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while in prison, and her supporters have previously said her health has worsened while incarcerated. Ardakani said Mohammadi has a heart condition and had suffered multiple heart attacks while imprisoned before emergency surgery in 2022.

Ardakani also said Mohammadi had signs of bruising on her body more than three months after her violent detention, and she described concern that authorities were seeking to wear her down. In a statement last month, the Nobel committee condemned what it called the “ongoing life-threatening mistreatment” of Mohammadi.

Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, previously told The Associated Press last month that her health was worsening, in part because of a beating he said she endured during her December arrest. According to that report, Rahmani said multiple men hit and kicked her in her side, head and neck, and that she had been on furlough since late 2024 over medical concerns.

In February, a Revolutionary Court in Mashhad sentenced Mohammadi to an additional seven years, a process supporters say typically allows little or no opportunity for defendants to contest charges. The Associated Press reported last month that an internet blackout imposed by Iranian authorities has stifled almost all communications from the country, and that Mohammadi’s lawyers do not talk to the media.

Ardakani said she was not immediately able to speak with Mohammadi’s lawyers directly in Iran, and she said speaking to foreign journalists without permission and surveillance by authorities is a criminal offense that can carry a sentence of up to 10 years. At dawn Tuesday, an airstrike reportedly hit a Shiite religious gathering place in Zanjan, near the prison where Mohammadi is being held.