Narges Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was beaten and arrested in Iran on Friday while addressing a crowd in the city of Mashhad, according to her family.
“If they intend to hurt her, I don’t see any positive outcome,” says Hamid Reza Mohammadi, a brother, speaking to TIME from Oslo. “The biggest concern I have is her health.”
Mohammadi, 53, has been on medical furlough from an Iranian prison for the last year. She had resumed the activism for which the Nobel committee awarded her the 2023 peace prize, advocating in interviews and small groups for women’s rights, the release of political prisoners and, as she wrote for TIME last week, a peaceful transition from Iran’s brutal regime to an electoral democracy.
Friday, however, was the first time since being furloughed that she addressed a crowd.
Mohammadi had traveled from her home in Tehran to the eastern city of Mashhad to attend a memorial for a human rights lawyer named Khosrow Alikordi, who had been found dead earlier this month. In videos posted on social media, she is seen standing on a car after the service, addressing mourners outside the mosque.
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“It was a memorial for a lawyer who was found dead, a suspicious death,” says her brother, Hamid Reza, quoting an eyewitness. “There were so many policemen from the intelligence agency and all kinds of military forces surrounding the mosque. Then they attacked people and beat them, many of them on the head.”
Hamid Reza says his sister was dragged through the crowd and forced into a car by security agents who held her by her hair, which she had refused to cover with the headscarf deemed mandatory for women by the Islamic Republic. Also arrested, according to the Narges Foundation, which is based in Paris, were fellow activists Sepideh Qolian, Pouran Nazemi, Hasti Amiri, and Aliyeh Motalebzadeh. The foundation said published reports also named Asadollah Fakhimi, Akbar Amini, Hasan Bagherinia, and Abolfazl Abri as being detained.
Before being swarmed by security agents, Mohammadi was leading the crowd in chanting “Majidreza Rahnavard,” the name of a 23-year-old who was hanged from a crane in Mashad three years ago to the day. He had been convicted, in what Amnesty International termed “a sham trial,” after taking part in the months of nationwide protests that followed the death in custody of Mahsa (Jina) Amini after being detained for “improper hijab.”
On Friday, there were some people who chanted against the regime, “chanting that it will be the last year of the regime,” says Hamid Reza Mohammadi. “And Narges also wants the regime change in Iran, but in a peaceful way. So she wasn’t provoking. But people have the right to express their frustration.”
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Mohammadi has a history of heart attacks, and was furloughed from prison in December 2024 to recover from surgery to remove a bone lesion. Her time at home was supposed to be only 21 days, but was repeatedly extended by Iranian authorities. Convicted on an assortment of charges, including “spreading propaganda against the state,” Mohammadi could still be forced to serve the 10 years that officially remains on her sentence.
Iran also has a long history of disposing of prominent activists by other means. In July, the Nobel Committee issued a statement expressing concern over “ongoing threats,” and quoted the laureate as saying, “I have been directly and indirectly threatened with ‘physical elimination’ by agents of the regime.”
