Iranian Nobel laureate to face new trial: family

Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi this week faces a new trial and risks being transferred out of Tehran to a new prison to serve an eventual sentence, her family said on Monday.

The trial, which gets underway on Tuesday at a Tehran revolutionary court, is the first against Mohammadi since her family accepted the 2023 prize on her behalf in Oslo on December 10.

The charges were not immediately clear but are believed to be related to her activities behind bars in Tehran's Evin prison where she has defiantly campaigned against Iran's Islamic authorities and the mandatory hijab for women.

"The first trial of Narges Mohammadi after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize will be held at 10:00 am (0630 GMT) on December 19 in Branch 26 of the revolutionary court," the family said in a statement.

It added that if convicted in this particular case, she risked being told to serve her sentence in a prison outside the Iranian capital.

"It was announced that, due to political and security issues, the execution of the sentence would take place outside Tehran," the family said, adding that the request for this had come from the intelligence ministry.

Mohammadi, 51, has spent much of the past two decades in and out of jail. She began serving her most recent sentence in November 2021.

The family said this will be the third trial Mohammadi has faced related to her activities in prison.

In the two previous cases, she was sentenced to 27 months in prison and four months of street sweeping and social work.

During the past two decades, Mohammadi has been arrested 13 times, and sentenced five times to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

The family confirmed that Mohammadi -- who has not seen her Paris-based husband and children for several years -- remains deprived of the right to make phone calls.

She has not spoken to her twin 17-year-old children -- who accepted the Nobel prize on her behalf -- for almost two years.

But until now she had been able to speak to certain family members inside Iran, ensuring her messages could rapidly reach the outside world via her social media accounts.

"Since November 29, prison authorities have also informed her of the termination of telephone calls and visits," the family said.

In her Nobel acceptance speech read by her children, Mohammadi denounced a "tyrannical and anti-women religious" government in Iran, predicting that Iranians would "dismantle obstruction and despotism through their persistence".