While imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi smuggled out fragments of his writings with the help of friends and fellow prisoners.
The risks were enormous. Mohammadi, 54, was violently assaulted and seriously ill for his activism against the Iranian regime, and has spent much of the past 20 years in prison, away from his children.
“One of my friends tried to take only three pieces of paper with him on the visitation day, but the prison security forces confiscated them,” Mohammadi told CNN’s Jomana Karashe on Wednesday in one of his first interviews since being released from prison in May on medical leave.
On another occasion, more than 20 notebooks were lost after she said she was severely assaulted and banished to another prison. But she kept writing, unafraid of the costs of speaking out, and turned the fragments into her memoir, A Woman Never Stops Fighting, which will be released in some European countries this month.
In the book, Mohammadi reveals new details about those responsible for abuses in prisons.
“In order to document these things, it is better to speak openly about their methods, expose and reveal their torture,” she said, wearing a colorful dress with the word “peace” printed in different languages and sitting in front of a portrait of Mahsa Zina Amini, who sparked nationwide protests in fall 2022 and was killed after being detained by Iran’s moral police.
Publishing a book like this is dangerous. “There may be consequences, but this is how our lives are in this region and this country,” she said.
She also acknowledged the risk of retribution for speaking to CNN, but said she wasn’t worried and that it was her “duty” to speak out. To avoid putting her at further risk, CNN agreed to focus the interview on her new memoir and personal experiences rather than recent events in Iran.
“If I could go back to the moment I started fighting, every moment I was arrested, even though I knew what was going to happen to me, I would definitely make the same choice and start fighting,” she said.
“But watching Ali and Kiana makes me question myself: Did I really have the right to deprive them of a normal life and the right to spend time with their mother? That’s the difficult part of the question, and I can’t give you a clear answer,” she added.
Mohammadi, one of Iran’s most prominent human rights activists, was sentenced to a total of more than 44 years in prison and 154 lashes, according to her foundation. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced in February, citing “credible reports”, that she had endured beatings and “life-threatening abuse” during her most recent prison sentence, from December to May.
According to these reports, during her arrest in December, she was repeatedly hit with wooden sticks and a baton, dragged by her hair on the ground, and suffered injuries that left open wounds on her head. Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Jørgen Watne Fridnes told CNN in February that she was repeatedly kicked in the pelvis and genital area, causing severe pain and the inability to sit or function normally.
“I was kept in solitary confinement for two months in the same conditions and not allowed to make phone calls or even meet my family or lawyer,” Mohammadi recalled.
She suffered a suspected heart attack in March, lost 20 kilograms (44 pounds) and her condition had deteriorated so much that her foundation warned in April that her life was in “imminent danger.”
After months of neglect by authorities, she developed heart disease caused by chronic anxiety and stress and was hospitalized for 18 days, her foundation said. At the time, Tasnim News Agency, one of Iran’s semi-official state news agencies, denied reports that her condition had worsened. Mohammadi was eventually discharged from the hospital and temporarily allowed to return home. He is currently receiving treatment.
Mohammadi said that confining prisoners in solitary confinement was “one of the government’s tools” to “destroy people” rather than simply execute them. The aim, she said, was to “dismember them psychologically, emotionally and physically, strip them of their identity, dehumanize them and distort and undermine their perceptions.”
Denying prisoners timely access to medical care is “another way to seriously jeopardize prisoners’ health and, in some cases, result in death,” she said. “These deaths are a form of silent execution.”
The Iranian government and official media have downplayed allegations of abuse against Mr. Muhammadi, despite witness testimony and international public outcry.
Despite the risks of opposition to the regime, two major protests have rocked Iran in recent years. The first was in January 2022, and the second was caused by the death of 22-year-old Amini. Both suffered violent repression from the authorities.
“If you look at the streets of Tehran, and even cities across the country, you will see how brave women are standing proudly on the streets,” Mohammadi said.
“Through the Women, Lives, Freedom movement, we were able to create the power of protesters and show it to the world: People who took to the streets would be beaten, killed, imprisoned, executed, but they had a sense of power and legitimacy that forced the government to retreat.”
For Mohammadi, who has always struggled with her dual identity as a mother and an activist, her book is both an ode to those fighting for democracy and the words of a mother who wrote this book in prison with her children in exile in France.
“Ali and Kiana have always been the force that brought me back to life and gave me hope,” she said. “I hope to meet them, to hug them, to see how much they’ve grown, to see if I’m going to come to their shoulders now, or if they’re going to come to my shoulders, and then to stand next to them again.”
