Imprisoned Iranian Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi’s health ‘at very high risk’

Mohammadi was urgently transferred to a hospital in Zanjan in Iran's northwest on Friday after a cardiac crisis and fainting.

Tehran: The health of imprisoned Iranian rights lawyer Narges Mohammadi was at “very high risk,” her foundation and family said Saturday, May 2, adding that Iran’s Intelligence Ministry was opposing her transfer to Tehran for treatment by her own doctors.

Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in her early 50s, was urgently transferred to a hospital in Zanjan in Iran’s northwest on Friday after a cardiac crisis and fainting. Her family has said her health had been worsening in part from a beating she received during her December arrest.

Medical teams in Zanjan have requested her records before performing any treatment, while recommending that she be transferred to Tehran, her foundation said.

But her Paris-based husband, Taghi Rahmani, said the Intelligence Ministry opposed the transfer for angiography, or imaging of the blood vessels. He spoke in a voice message shared with The Associated Press by the foundation.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee in a statement urged Iranian authorities to immediately transfer Mohammadi to her medical team, saying her life is in their hands.

“She has the mental resilience for imprisonment, but her body does not have the readiness. The Ministry of Intelligence wouldn’t even mind if (she) died,” her husband told Sky News.

He added that their children hadn’t seen Mohammadi for over a decade, since 2015.

Before her arrest on Dec 12, Mohammadi already had been serving a sentence of 13 years and nine months on charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against Iran’s government, but had been released on furlough since late 2024 over medical concerns.

Her legal team is pursuing the matter with the General Prosecutor’s office, the foundation said.