Husband Says Iran Sentenced Activist Wife to Prison, Lashes

DUBAI, UAE — 

Iran has sentenced a prominent human rights activist to more than eight years prison, according to her husband.

Paris-based Taghi Rahmani tweeted on Sunday that his wife, Narges Mohammadi, was tried in five minutes and sentenced to prison and 70 lashes. He has said she is prohibited from communicating and has no access to lawyers. Last week, she was sent to Gharchak prison near Tehran.

Authorities arrested Mohammadi in November after she attended memorial for a victim of violent 2019 protests. Rahmani said in December his wife stood accused of “spying for Saudi Arabia.”

Mohammadi has a long history of imprisonment, harsh sentences and international calls for reviews of her case.

In May, the European Union called on Iran to reconsider her sentence of 30 months in prison and 80 lashes on charges of protesting the killing of protesters during the country’s 2019 unrest.

A spokesperson for the bloc urged Iran to look into Mohammadi’s case under “applicable international human rights law and taking into account her deteriorating health condition.” Mohammadi confirmed her sentence at the time in an Instagram post, saying she does not “accept any of these sentences.”

In the post, Mohammadi said one of the charges against her is having a party and dancing in jail.

She was released from jail in October 2020, after serving eight and a half years in prison, after her initial, 10-year sentence was commuted. In that case, she was sentenced in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on charges including planning crimes to harm the security of Iran, spreading propaganda against the government and forming and managing an illegal group.

Before imprisonment, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran.

Mohammadi has been close to Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who founded the center. Ebadi left Iran after the disputed re-election of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which touched off unprecedented protests and harsh crackdowns by authorities.

In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize.

Hong Kong Independence Activist Released from Prison

WASHINGTON — 

Prominent Hong Kong independence activist Edward Leung was released from jail Wednesday after serving a four year sentence for taking part in a 2016 protest.

The 30-year-old activist posted a message on his Facebook page that he was released from Shek Pik Prison before dawn and was home with his family.

“After four years, I want to cherish this precious time to reunite with my family and resume a normal life with them,” he wrote while also expressing his thanks to his supporters for their concern and love.

Leung first came to prominence in 2016 as the spokesman of Hong Kong Indigenous, a group that called for maintaining a distinct identity for Hong Kong and a total break from mainland China. He took part in the so-called Fishball Revolution protest against a police crackdown on unlicensed street food vendors in the city’s Mong Kok district that turned violent.

Leung was convicted in 2018 of assaulting a police officer and taking part in a riot in connection with the Mong Kok incident and sentenced to six years in prison. Local news outlets say the sentence was reduced by two years for good behavior.

He coined the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times” for his campaign for a seat in the city’s legislature in 2016 that was cut short when he was disqualified due to his pro-independence stance. The slogan has since been outlawed under the draconian national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 in response to the massive and violent protests the previous year.

Hundreds of pro-democracy activists have been convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms under the law, which outlaws succession, subversion, terrorism and foreign collusion.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse.