Health of German woman jailed in Iran failing, says activist

A 66-year-old German-Iranian woman detained in Iran is suffering from severe ill health, a fellow prisoner at Tehran's Evin jail said Sunday.

"The life of Nahid Taghavi, a political prisoner, is in danger," the prize-winning campaigner and rights activist Narges Mohammadi wrote on Instagram.

Taghavi, a women's rights activist, is serving a nearly 11-year sentence in Iran after being arrested in 2020 and convicted a year later on national security violations. Her family vehemently rejects the accusations.

Taghavi receives 'strong painkiller injections'

Mohammadi wrote that Taghavi is so ill she can "barely get out of her bed."

She added that Taghavi "goes to the infirmary, receives strong painkiller injections and returns to her bed."

"The pain is so severe it can be seen on her face," she added.

A partial English translation of the post was tweeted by Taghavi's daughter, Mariam Claren.

Seven months in isolation

Mohammadi said that Taghavi had now spent 220 days in isolation, and over the past few days her health has deteriorated.

The confinement had worsened an existing spinal disc condition, Mohammadi added, and Taghavi was now also suffering from cervical disc problems, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Taghavi was allowed brief medical leave in 2022, but according to her family, she was returned to jail before she could recover and is being held in solitary confinement.

She was convicted along with British-Iranian Mehran Raoof, who is also still being held. 

Mohammadi highlights plight of prisoners

Mohammadi is deputy head of Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi's Defenders of Human Rights Center.

Her Instagram account is run by her family in France based on her phone calls to relatives.

Through this, despite her incarceration, Mohammadi continues to push for the rights of prisoners in Evin.

She previously revealed how women prisoners arrested in the wake of last year's anti-government protests were being sexually and physically abused.

The protests were triggered by the death in custody in September of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurd Jina Mahsa Amini, arrested by the morality police for violating strict dress codes.

Despite releases, Iran holds several Westerners

More than a dozen Western passport-holders remain detained in Iran, which rights groups say is part of a deliberate policy of hostage-taking by Tehran to extract concessions from the West.

Several Westerners have been released in recent days, in part thanks to mediation by Oman.

They include a Dane and two Austrian-Iranian citizens and a Belgian aid worker who was freed by Iran in return for Belgium releasing an Iranian diplomat convicted in a terror plot.

Last month, Tehran also freed a French citizen and a French-Irish citizen, both of whom had been on hunger strike and the subject of increasing concerns about their health.

As well as Taghavi, another Iranian-German national, Jamshid Sharmahd, is facing execution any day.

Sharmahd was captured by Iran in August 2020, while traveling through the UAE, and charged with terrorism over a deadly 2008 bombing.

He was sentenced to death in February, a verdict that has since been upheld by the supreme court.

Family members, human rights activists and an array of German politicians have described the allegations against him as unfounded.

mm/nm (AFP)