Tehran attacks 'anti-Iranian' move to award jailed activist Nobel Peace Prize

Iran's Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed rights activist Narges Mohammadi as a biased move aimed at politicizing the prize.

The award-making committee urged Iran to release Mohammadi, an Iranian serving 12 years in prison and one of the nation's leading activists who has campaigned for both women's rights and the abolition of the death penalty.

"The action of the Nobel Peace Committee is political move in line with the interventionist and anti-Iranian policies of some European governments," ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said.

"The Nobel Peace committee has awarded a prize to a person convicted of repeated law violations and criminal acts, and we condemn this as biased and politically motivated," he said in a statement carried by state media.

Hailing Mohammadi as a "freedom fighter", the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee started her speech by saying, in Farsi, the words for "woman, life, freedom" - one of the slogans of protests against the Iranian government.

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all," Berit Reiss-Andersen said in the citation.

The award also recognised the hundreds of thousands of people who have demonstrated against Iranian discrimination and oppression of women, Reiss-Andersen said.

"Only by embracing equal rights for all can the world achieve the fraternity between nations that (prize founder) Alfred Nobel sought to promote," she said.

Release call

Mohammadi is currently serving multiple sentences in Tehran's Evin Prison amounting to about 12 years imprisonment, according to the Front Line Defenders rights organisation, one of the many periods she has been detained behind bars.

Charges include spreading propaganda against the state.

She is the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organisation led by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the 122-year-old prize and the first one since Maria Ressa of the Philippines won the award in 2021 jointly with Russia's Dmitry Muratov.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or around $1 million, will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.

"This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran, with its undisputed leader, Narges Mohammadi," Reiss-Andersen said.

"If the Iranian authorities make the right decision, they will release her so that she can be present to receive this honour (in December), which is what we primarily hope for."