Iranian Nobel winner needs immediate cardiac care, brother says

Imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who was taken from jail to hospital last week, requires urgent specialised medical care to treat a life-threatening heart condition, her brother told Reuters on Monday. 

Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while in prison for her campaign to advance women's rights and abolish the death penalty in Iran. She suffered a suspected heart attack in late March and was taken to a hospital in northwestern Iran on May 1 amid rapidly deteriorating health, her family has said.

"She is suffering from terrible headaches, nausea and chest pain. That is what we are very worried about, her heart," her brother Hamidreza Mohammadi said in an interview from his home in Norway.

The provincial hospital where she is being treated cannot provide her adequate care, he said.

Experts "all believe that her life is in danger and she needs at least one month away from prison conditions to be treated properly," he said. "She needs her own doctors who have performed the operations before and know exactly what is wrong with her."

Both Mohammadi's family and the Norwegian Nobel Committee have appealed to the Iranian authorities to transfer her to her dedicated medical team in Tehran for treatment.

'REFUSED TO BE BROKEN BY THE REGIME'

Hamidreza Mohammadi described his sister as a force of nature who refuses to be bowed.

"The thing that makes Narges so special is that she has broken this cliche of a prisoner who has been long in prison and is broken and sad," he said. "She has always been energetic and she has refused to be broken by the regime."

He last spoke with her the day before her latest arrest in December and said even contacting his family in Iran is difficult amid the ongoing war with the U.S. and Israel, which he said the authorities were using to justify oppression.  

"The situation in Iran is not like anything before. It's an emergency. And we know that lives of a lot of people are in danger. We see executions that are carried out every day," Mohammadi said.

While the war is attracting global attention, the international community should focus on the plight of the Iranian people and human rights in Iran, he added.

"The world should wake up," Mohammadi said.