Level 1 — Absolute Beginner

Narges Mohammadi is a woman from Iran. She fights for women's rights. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023.

For many years she was in prison. The prison was in a city called Zanjan. She became very sick there.

Doctors say she had two heart attacks. Her family was very worried. They asked the government to free her.

On Sunday she left the prison. She went to a hospital in Tehran. Her foundation says she must not go back to prison.

prison

A place where people are kept because they broke the law.

peace

A time with no war or fighting.

prize

Something special you win for great work.

heart attack

A serious problem when the heart suddenly hurts and stops working well.

hospital

A place where sick people get help from doctors.

bail

Money that lets a person leave prison before the next court day.

rights

The things every person is allowed to have or do.

foundation

A group that works to help people or a cause.

Level 2 — Elementary

Narges Mohammadi is one of Iran's best-known human rights activists. She has spent most of the last decade in and out of Iranian prisons because of her writing, her interviews and her work against the death penalty and the strict dress code for women.

In 2023 she was given the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said she had paid a very high personal price for her work, including arrests, beatings and long jail sentences. At the time of the award she was inside Tehran's Evin Prison.

More recently Mohammadi was held in Zanjan Prison. Her family and her foundation said her health was getting worse very quickly. After a public alarm and ten days in a Zanjan hospital, an Iranian court suspended part of her sentence and allowed her to leave on heavy bail.

On Sunday, May 10, 2026, she was moved by ambulance to Tehran Pars Hospital, where her own doctors can now treat her. She still has about 18 years left on her many sentences. Her foundation says she must never be sent back to prison.

activist

A person who works hard for a social or political change.

human rights

The basic freedoms and protections that belong to every person.

death penalty

Punishment in which a court orders a person to be killed.

dress code

A rule about what clothes people must or must not wear.

Nobel committee

The group in Norway that chooses the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize each year.

sentence

The punishment a court gives, such as years in prison.

ambulance

A vehicle used to take sick or injured people quickly to hospital.

specialist

A doctor or expert who is very skilled in one area of medicine.

Level 3 — Intermediate

Narges Mohammadi, the 54-year-old Iranian human rights defender whose advocacy against the mandatory hijab and against capital punishment earned her the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, has been released from Zanjan Prison on a substantial bail order and admitted to Tehran Pars Hospital, her foundation announced on May 10, 2026.

The transfer follows ten days of in-patient cardiac monitoring at a state hospital in Zanjan after Mohammadi suffered what doctors described as two suspected myocardial infarctions inside prison walls. International rights groups, Nobel laureates and Western governments had all called publicly for her urgent removal from custody, warning that she was at acute risk of dying behind bars.

Mohammadi has been arrested 13 times, convicted five separate times and sentenced to a combined 31 years in prison and 154 lashes over the course of her career. Even from inside prison she has continued to write, give interviews and organise: during her Nobel year she dictated essays and statements through visitors and through smuggled-out audio recordings, and she co-led hunger strikes against solitary confinement and against executions.

The court decree that freed her is, formally, only a 'sentence suspension' on medical grounds, not a pardon or commutation; the remaining 18 years of her aggregate sentence are still on the books, and the bail figures reported by Iranian media run into the equivalent of millions of dollars. Her foundation and her exiled husband Taghi Rahmani, who has not seen his wife in person since 2015, say the international community must use this moment to ensure she is never returned to detention.

advocacy

Public support for a cause or policy.

mandatory hijab

A legal rule requiring women to wear a head covering in public, as enforced in Iran.

capital punishment

Execution by the state as a legal penalty.

myocardial infarction

The medical term for a heart attack, when blood flow to part of the heart is blocked.

lash

A stroke given as a corporal punishment with a whip or stick.

solitary confinement

Imprisonment of a single inmate alone in a cell, isolated from others.

pardon

A formal cancellation of a person's legal punishment by a head of state or court.

commutation

The reduction of a sentence to a less severe one without erasing the conviction.

Level 4 — Advanced

Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian dissident whose three-decade campaign against the mandatory hijab, against the death penalty and on behalf of political prisoners earned her the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, was released on a substantial bail bond on Sunday and admitted to Tehran Pars Hospital for cardiac care that her family and foundation say cannot be safely provided inside the carceral system. The transfer, confirmed publicly by the Mohammadi Foundation late on May 10 and reported by NPR, the Washington Post and ABC News among others, follows ten days of inpatient observation in a state hospital in Zanjan after she suffered what attending physicians characterized as two suspected myocardial infarctions in the women's wing of Zanjan Prison.

Mohammadi, 54, has been arrested thirteen times, convicted on five separate occasions, and sentenced under sections of the Islamic Penal Code dealing with 'propaganda against the system,' 'collusion against national security,' and assembly offenses to a combined term widely reported as 31 years and 154 lashes. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee citation in 2023 specifically credited her work against the obligatory veil and against capital punishment, observing that she had 'paid a high personal price' for her advocacy. From inside both Evin Prison in Tehran and, more recently, Zanjan, she has nonetheless continued to function as a public voice: dictating essays through visitors, co-organising hunger strikes against solitary confinement and against executions, and authorising statements in her name through the foundation that bears her name and is run in part from exile by her husband, the journalist Taghi Rahmani.

The legal instrument that freed her is formally a sentence suspension on medical grounds rather than a pardon, a commutation or a parole. The amount of bail reported by Iranian state-affiliated outlets runs into the equivalent of multiple millions of US dollars; about eighteen years of aggregate detention remain hanging over her head, and the judiciary retains discretion to revoke the suspension at any time. Her foundation has therefore framed Sunday's transfer not as the conclusion of her case but as an interval — a corridor of medical access that the international community must work to make permanent.

Western chanceries from Oslo to Washington welcomed the move within hours, with several explicitly pressing for the bail order to evolve into outright release and for unimpeded access to her own doctors, her family and the press. Iran's official line, by contrast, has emphasized the technical and humanitarian nature of the decision and warned against external interference. The next phase, observers note, will turn on whether Iranian authorities permit her to remain a public actor — to write, to receive visitors, to communicate freely — or whether the suspension is used as a quiet form of medicalized house arrest pending the eventual reactivation of her unfinished sentences.

dissident

A person who publicly disagrees with and opposes the policies of their government.