Jailed Iranian Nobel laureate hospitalized
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has urged the Iranian authorities to release the jailed human rights campaigner, Narges Mohammadi, to her dedicated medical team. Her health has deteriorated sharply and she has been moved to a prison hospital. We speak to her brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi.
Also in the programme: Ukraine says it has struck two oil tankers off Russia's Black Sea coast, as it continues its campaign against the energy exports that fund Moscow's war effort; a manufacturer of the United States' most widely used abortion pill has asked the Supreme Court to allow postal deliveries of the medication, a day after a lower court halted them; and Chinese-Icelandic singer, Laufey, on making jazz cool again!
(Photo: Narges Mohammad. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.5 | We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:14.3 | I'm James Menendez. |
| 0:15.6 | And we're going to begin today in Iran. |
| 0:17.6 | And how the Iranian authorities appear to be using the war with the US and Israel |
| 0:21.5 | as cover to step up the pressure on their opponents. |
| 0:25.6 | We heard on Friday how the regime has carried out at least 22 executions of political prisoners |
| 0:31.0 | in the past six weeks, many of them young people involved in the anti-government protests back in January. |
| 0:37.4 | Well, now come some grim news about the country's most famous political activists, |
| 0:41.7 | the Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohamedi. |
| 0:45.1 | For years, a thorn in the side of the regime. |
| 0:48.3 | Here she is speaking to news out in June last year, |
| 0:50.8 | after getting a temporary release from jail on medical grounds. |
| 0:56.5 | I spent 10 years of my life in prison for simply defending human rights and defending peace. |
| 1:03.9 | So now that we are amidst a full-fledged war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran, |
| 1:13.8 | I feel that we are in another chapter of the war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the people of Iran. So as an Iranian who has |
| 1:20.0 | always supported human rights and who has always supported peace, I feel like I am at a very huge crossroads. Navigas Mohammedi was sent back to jail |
| 1:31.8 | in February, sentenced to an additional seven and a half years, not to a prison in Tehran, but to one in |
| 1:38.8 | Zanjan, a small city about three hours dry from the capital, where conditions are said to be worse and where |
| 1:45.7 | she's far from her family. On Friday, though, Nargis fell seriously ill again and was admitted to |
| 1:52.2 | hospital in Zanjan. I've been speaking to her brother Hamid Reza Mohamedi, who lives in Oslo, in Norway. |
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