Jailed Nobel Winner Mohammadi to Continue Protests, She Says in Smuggled Letter

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi will continue her fight for human rights even if it leads to her death, she said in a letter smuggled out from prison and published on Monday by Swedish public broadcaster SVT.

Mohammadi is serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on charges including spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic.

“Imprisonment, psychological torture, constant solitary confinement, sentence after sentence; that hasn’t and is not going to stop me,” she wrote, according to SVT.

“I am going to stand up for freedom and equality even if it costs me my life.”

SVT said the letter was written in reply to questions that had been smuggled into the prison via intermediaries, but did not reveal details of how the exchange had taken place.

Mohammadi began a hunger strike in November to protest against what she said was the jail’s failure to give her access to medical care.

In the brief comments published by SVT, which gave no information about her health, Mohammadi said she missed her children, Kiana and Ali, the most.

“Particularly these days, when all the new prisoners talk about the interviews the two have done….It is more than eight years since I saw them,” she wrote.

Kiana told SVT that the family had not had any direct contact with Mohammadi for a year and nine months.

“Before that we would occasionally speak on the telephone, but that has stopped,” the 17 year-old said.

This year’s Nobel festivities will take place on Dec. 10 in Oslo and Stockholm. Mohammadi will be represented by her children, Ali and Kiana Rahman, according the Nobel Foundation.

The two will receive Mohammadi’s diploma and gold medal at Oslo’s City Hall and give the Nobel Prize lecture on behalf of their mother.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson, editing by Terje Solsvik and Chizu Nomiyama)

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