Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi’s memoir details abuse in Iranian prison. She says she’s prepared for the consequences

By Issy Ronald, Jomana Karadsheh, Florence Davey-Attlee, Aida Karimi, CNN

(CNN) — During her incarceration at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, Nobel peace laureate Narges Mohammadi would smuggle out fragments of writing with the help of her friends and fellow inmates.

The risks were enormous; Mohammadi, 54, has suffered violent beatings, fallen gravely ill and spent much of the last two decades in prison, away from her children, for her activism against the Iranian regime.

“One of my friends was trying to take out just three sheets of paper on a visiting day, but the prison security forces confiscated them from her,” Mohammadi told CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh Wednesday in one of her first interviews since being released from prison in May on temporary medical leave.

Another time, more than 20 of her notebooks were lost after she says she was badly beaten and exiled to another prison. But she kept writing, unafraid of the costs of speaking out, and has turned those fragments into a memoir “A Woman Never Stops Fighting,” which is being released this month in some European countries.

In the book, Mohammadi shares new details about the people responsible for her mistreatment in prison.

“In order to document these things, it is better to speak openly about their methods, to expose and reveal their torture,” she said, wearing a multi-colored dress with the word “peace” printed in different languages and sitting in front of a portrait of Mahsa Jhina Amini, who was killed after being held in custody by Iran’s morality police, sparking nationwide protests in the autumn of 2022.

Publishing a book like this is dangerous. “There may be consequences, but this is what life is like for us in this region and in this country,” she said.

She also acknowledged the risk of retribution for talking to CNN, but said she wasn’t worried and that it was her “duty” to speak out. To avoid putting her at further risk, CNN agreed to focus the interview on her new memoir and personal experiences rather than recent events in Iran.

“If I could go back to the moment when I began my struggle, to each and every moment when I was arrested, even knowing what would happen to me, I would certainly make the same choice to begin the struggle,” she said.

“But when I look at Ali and Kiana,” she added, referencing her now 19-year-old twins, “I find myself filled with doubt. Did I really have the right to deprive them of a very ordinary life, of having their mother with them? That is the difficult part of the question, and I cannot answer it with certainty.”

In total, Mohammadi, one of Iran’s most prominent human rights activists, has been sentenced to more than 44 years in prison as well as 154 lashes, according to her foundation. During her most recent stint behind bars between December and May, she endured beatings and “life-threatening mistreatment,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in February, citing “credible reports.”

Those reports said she was beaten repeatedly with wooden sticks and batons during her arrest in December and dragged across the ground by her hair, sustaining injuries that left open wounds on her head. She was also kicked repeatedly in the pelvis and genital area, leaving her in severe pain and unable to sit or function normally, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told CNN in February.

“I was held in solitary confinement for two months in that same condition, without being allowed to make phone calls or see my family or even my lawyers,” Mohammadi recalled.

She suffered a suspected heart attack in March, lost 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of weight and her condition deteriorated so much that her life was “in imminent danger,” her foundation warned in April.

After months of neglect by authorities, she was hospitalized for 18 days, suffering from heart disease caused by chronic anxiety and stress, her foundation said. At the time, Tasnim, one of Iran’s semi-official state news agencies, rejected reports her condition had deteriorated. Eventually, Mohammadi was discharged and temporarily allowed to return home. She says she is still receiving medical treatment.

Keeping prisoners in solitary confinement is “one of the government’s tools,” to “destroy a person” rather than simply executing them, Mohammadi said. The aim is to “break them down psychologically, emotionally and physically; to strip them of their identity, to strip them of their humanity, and to distort and undermine their perceptions,” she said.

Denying prisoners timely access to medical treatment is “another method that seriously endangers their health and, in some cases, leads to their death,” she said. “These deaths are a form of silent execution.”

The Iranian government and official media have downplayed Mohammadi’s allegations of mistreatment, despite eyewitness accounts and international public outcry.

Despite the risks that come with opposing the regime, two large-scale protest movements have convulsed Iran in recent years – one in January and one in the autumn of 2022 that was prompted by the death of 22-year-old Amini. Both were met with violent crackdowns from authorities.

“If you look at the streets of Tehran, and even at cities across the country, you can see how courageously women are standing tall in the streets,” Mohammadi said.

“Through the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, we were able to create the power of the protestor and present it to the world; that is, someone who had come out into the streets would be beaten, killed, imprisoned and executed, but they had a sense of power, a sense of legitimacy which forced the government to retreat.”

For Mohammadi, constantly straddling the dual identities of a mother and an activist, her book represents both a paean to those fighting for democracy as well as the “words of a mother who wrote this book in prison,” with her children living far way in exile in France.

“Ali and Kiana have always been the force that brought me back to life and kept me hopeful,” she said. “I hope to see them, embrace them, and see how much they have grown – to see whether I come up to their shoulders now, or they come up to mine – and to stand beside them again.”

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