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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Sarah Harvey and Sami Quadri

Jailed Iranian women’s rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi wins Nobel Peace Prize

Imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting the oppression of women in the country.

“She fights for women against systematic discrimination and oppression,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo.

Authorities arrested Mohammadi in November after she attended a memorial for a victim of violent 2019 protests. Mohammadi has a long history of imprisonment, harsh sentences and international calls for reviews of her case.

Mohammadi received the prize for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” the awards committee said.

“Her brave struggle has come at tremendous personal cost,” the committee spokesperson added.

Before being jailed, 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 centre.

Ebadi left Iran after the disputed re-election of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 that touched off unprecedented protests and harsh crackdowns by authorities. In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize.

In 2022, Mohammadi was tried in five minutes and sentenced to eight years in prison and 70 lashes.

The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11m Swedish kronor (£821,000). The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

Previous recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize include former US President Barack Obama and civil rights activist Nelson Mandela.

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