The brother of imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi says doctors cannot yet offer a definitive prognosis on her condition, days after Iranian authorities released her on bail amid a health crisis that her family says nearly killed her.
Hamidreza Mohammadi told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda on May 12 that after 10 days in the critical care unit of a hospital in the northwestern city of Zanjan, the family arranged their own ambulance to transport her to Tehran, where she is now being treated by a medical team. He said her blood pressure had dropped to critically low levels during her hospitalization.
“The doctors cannot say anything definitive because Narges’s medical file is complicated,” he said, citing her underlying health conditions, including cardiac inflammation, as compounding factors.
He added that the coming week would be devoted entirely to tests and angiography to determine the extent of her health deterioration before any treatment could begin.
Mohammadi, 54, suffered a suspected heart attack in Zanjan prison on March 24 while serving a sentence that carries 18 years still to run. Her Paris-based lawyer said last week that she had lost 20 kilograms and was unrecognizable from her state before her most recent arrest in December.
In a joint statement released on May 12, more than 110 Nobel laureates urged Iranian authorities and the international community to act “without delay” to secure her release and ensure continued access to medical treatment.
“Medical experts warn that her life may be at imminent risk,” the signatories said, adding that she had been denied specialized medical care for months while imprisoned.
Her brother said the Iranian judiciary did not need to resort to executions to silence activists.
“When there is a lot of noise and the attention of the international community is elsewhere, the Iranian government uses this silent killing,” he said, adding that it had been the regime’s plan for Mohammadi to die quietly amid the conflict with the United States and Israel, eliminating what he called one of the most powerful voices in Iranian civil society.
The warning echoes a passage from Mohammadi’s forthcoming memoir, due for publication at the end of this summer, in which she writes that authoritarian regimes do not always need the gallows — sometimes they simply wait for the body to fail.
“Every day we witness Narges getting worse,” her brother said. “The question is whether we want to stop fighting to stay alive, or force [the Islamic republic] to abandon this use of prisoners’ illnesses as a weapon.”
Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her decades of campaigning for human rights and women’s rights in Iran.
She was unable to receive the award in person, as she was imprisoned at the time. Her foundation has called for her permanent release, saying she must never return to the conditions that caused her health to collapse.
