Iranian Nobel laureate Mohammadi absent as new trial opens: lawyer

TEHRAN: A new trial against jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi opened Saturday in her absence, said a lawyer for the women’s rights activist who has refused to attend hearings.
Mohammadi, 52, has been jailed since November 2021 over several past convictions relating to her advocacy against the obligatory hijab for women and capital punishment in Iran.
“The hearing of Ms Narges Mohammadi was held today without her presence at the 29th Branch” of the Revolutionary Court in the capital Tehran, said lawyer Mostafa Nili on social media platform X.
Nili said his client was “accused of propaganda against the state” over “her remarks on Dina Ghalibaf and on the boycott of legislative elections” held in March.
Rights groups have said Ghalibaf, a journalist and student, was arrested after accusing security forces on social media of putting her in handcuffs and sexually assaulting her during a previous arrest at a metro station. She has since been released.
The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website said on April 22 that Ghalibaf “had not been raped” and that she was being prosecuted for making a “false statement.”
Mohammadi’s family quoted her last month as saying that the latest trial should be held in public so “witnesses and survivors can testify to the sexual assaults perpetrated by the Islamic republic regime against women.”
The Nobel laureate in March shared an audio message from prison, in which she decried a “full-scale war against women” in the Islamic republic.
Iranian police in recent months have intensified enforcement of the country’s Islamic dress code for women, notably making use of video surveillance.
Under rules adopted shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, women in Iran are required to cover their hair and dress modestly in public spaces.