Wed 22 July 2020:
A group of UN human rights experts has called on Iran to immediately release imprisoned human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who has reportedly been suffering from symptoms of COVID-19 — the illness caused by the new coronavirus — “before it is too late.”
“The group of 16 experts expressed grave concerns that Ms. Mohammadi appears to have contracted COVID-19 in Zanjan Prison,” the UN Human Rights Council said in a statement on July 22.
Mohammadi, who is serving a prison sentence for anti-government propaganda and membership of a banned group opposed to the death penalty, has been in detention since 2015.
She received a combined 16-year prison sentence in May 2016, of which she will need to serve 10 years under Iranian law.
The UN experts called on authorities to give Mohammadi, who showed the first symptoms of COVID-19 on June 29, the results of the test she took on 8 July, and to move her to a hospital for proper care.
Mohammadi, who served as the spokesperson for the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, said in a letter from prison published online on July 13, that she and 11 of her cellmates were suspected of having been infected with the coronavirus. One of her cellmates subsequently tested positive.
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