Iranian Nobel Laureate Gets Second Prison Sentence and Ends Hunger Strike

The activist Narges Mohammadi was sentenced to another seven years, bringing the total she must serve to 17 years, her foundation said.Narges Mohammadi in an undated photo provided by her foundation in 2023.Credit...Narges Mohammadi Foundation, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 8, 2026, 3:19 p.m. ETIranian authorities have sentenced the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi to a second prison sentence even before she had completed her last jail term, her family and lawyers said on Sunday.The Narges Foundation, which represents Ms. Mohammadi and her causes, also said in a statement that on Sunday she had ended a six-day hunger strike that she began in protest of what she said was her unlawful detention. The foundation, based in France, expressed concern over her deteriorating health.A day earlier, it said, Ms. Mohammadi, 53, was tried in a new case and sentenced to more than seven and a half more years in prison for “assembly and collusion against national security” and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic Regime.” That brings the total number of years she will serve to 17, according to Chirinne Ardakani, a human rights lawyer with the foundation.As one of Iran’s most prominent civil rights activists, Ms. Mohammadi has been repeatedly imprisoned over the past decade for her campaigning against Iran’s death penalty, compulsory hijab laws and use of solitary confinement.In 2023, Ms. Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving the prize in absentia while she served a previous 10-year sentence in Tehran’s Evin prison.Ms. Mohammadi was given a medical furlough from that sentence in 2024 to obtain treatment for a series of health problems. But she was arrested in late December at a memorial for a well-known human rights lawyer in the northeastern city of Mashhad. The new sentence was for her actions during that medical furlough. Shortly after her arrest, she told her family that she had been so badly beaten she had to be briefly hospitalized. And in early February, she went on a hunger strike to protest her detention and lack of access to medical care.She ended the strike on Sunday, six days later, the foundation said, after being hospitalized amid deteriorating health conditions. Ms. Mohammadi, who had not been permitted contact with her family or lawyer since a call on Dec. 14, was allowed a brief call on Sunday with her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, the foundation said.Mr. Nili said on social media that in addition to the new prison term, the court also imposed a subsequent two-year ban on leaving the country and ordered Ms. Mohammadi to live in “internal exile” for two years in the southeastern city of Khusf, more than 450 miles from the capital, Tehran, where she lived.Ms. Ardakani, the foundation’s human rights lawyer, said the trial comes amid a vast crackdown after mass protests swept Iran, and described the trial against Ms. Mohammadi as unjust.“At a time when repression is in full swing, the Iranian regime — responsible for crimes against humanity — continues its relentless persecution of all dissenting voices, including Narges Mohammadi,” she said.SKIP