A court in Iran has sentenced Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who has been detained since November 16, to eight years in prison and received 70 lashes, her husband announced on Sunday.
A tweet by Taqi Rahmani, the activist’s husband residing in France, stated that the verdict was pronounced after a session that lasted only five minutes.
It was not clear the details of the charges and the merits of the ruling.
Mohammadi is the spokeswoman for the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, which was founded by Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and has been suspended repeatedly in recent years.
Mohammadi was released in October 2020 after five years in prison, and was sentenced again in May 2021 to receiving 80 lashes and 30 months in prison for being convicted of “propaganda against the Iranian political system”, “defamation” and “rebellion” against the prison authority.
The activist is accused of publishing a statement against the death penalty and organizing a sit-in while she was in Tehran’s Evin prison.
In mid-January, the Iranian judicial authorities ordered the return of the Iranian-French researcher, Fariba Adelkhah, who has been detained since 2019 in Iran, to prison after violating the conditions of house arrest.
On the eighth of the same month, the opposition Iranian writer and journalist Bektas Abten spent in his prison after contracting Covid-19, according to several human rights organizations that blamed Tehran for his death.