Amnesty International and Nahid Taghavi’s family say she has been released from an Iranian prison. The women’s rights activist was serving more than 10 years for “propaganda against the state.”
Women’s rights activist Nahid Taghavi returned to Germany after more than 4 years in custody in Iran late on Sunday, her family and Amnesty International announced early on Monday.
According to Amnesty, she was tortured and put in solitary confinement, spending more than 1,500 days in jail in Iran.
“It’s over. Nahid is free! After more than 4 years as a political prisoner in the Islamic Republic of Iran my mother Nahid Taghavi was freed and is back in Germany,” Taghavi’s daughter Mariam Claren wrote online, posting an image of her and her mother at an airport.
Taghavi was arrested in October 2020 on a visit to Iran.
Her more than 10-year sentence for spreading “propaganda” and for membership of an illegal group was passed down in August 2021.
Daughter thanks supporters, says justice served
Mariam Claren had been campaigning for her mother’s release while in Germany.
“My mother is finally home,” Claren said on Monday. “Mere words can’t describe our joy. From Berlin to Tehran: your solidarity helped to achieve justice.”
In Germany alone, more than 30,000 signatures were gathered demanding her release in recent years, with demonstrations in Berlin, Cologne and elsewhere.
However, Claren also said her mother was one case of many.
“Many more non-violent political prisoners like my mother are still in Iranian jails,” she said. “The impunity of the Iranian authorities must come to an end.”
Taghavi, an architect who’s lived in Cologne since 1983, was a vocal advocate of democratic and particularly women’s rights in Iran.
The speaker of the Bundestag parliament, Bärbel Bas, said in a prior appeal for her release that she was “arrested as a political prisoner solely because of her peaceful realization or her rights to free expression and freedom of assembly.”
