Narges Mohammadi: I am banned from leaving and they won't issue me a passport

Narges Mohammadi, a civil activist and deputy head of the Center for Human Rights Defenders, told DW that three judicial authorities had issued her with a travel ban and a passport ban. She had planned to go to France to see her children after five years.

The Attorney General, the Prosecutor General of Tehran, and the Head of the Evin Prosecutor’s Office have ordered the Passport Office to refuse to issue a passport to Narges Mohammadi in three separate letters dated October 3 and 8. The three officials have also stated that Ms. Mohammadi is not allowed to leave the country.

Narges Mohammadi, a civil rights activist, prisoner rights advocate, and activist for the campaign to gradually abolish the death penalty, was released from prison on October 8 of this year after serving five and a half years in prison, including two and a half years previously.

The vice president of the Center for Human Rights Defenders told DW that two weeks after his release, he took steps to obtain a passport and lift the travel ban because in May 2009, while traveling to Guatemala to attend a women's conference, his passport was taken and he was banned from leaving.

He first went to the Tehran Prosecutor's Office to meet with Tehran Prosecutor Ali Al-Qasi Mehr in person, but the prosecutor told him he could not comment on his travel ban.

Ms. Mohammadi then went to the Evin Prosecutor's Office and spoke to the head of the office, Amin Nasseri. He said the same thing.

Narges Mohammadi then goes to the passport office. The officer talks to her for nearly two hours and tells her that she is banned from leaving and cannot get a passport. The officer suggests she go to the presidential office in the passport office.

Finally, in this office, he is told that he has been banned from leaving by three judicial authorities under three judicial orders and that he is not entitled to a passport.

According to the presidential institution based in the Passport Office, on October 12, five days before Narges Mohammadi's release from prison, the Tehran Prosecutor and the Head of the Evin Prosecutor's Office, and a week later, on October 19, the Attorney General of the country, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, wrote a letter to this institution, issuing an order banning her from leaving and banning her from issuing a passport.

This means that during all the days that Ms. Mohammadi went to the prosecutor's office and the Evin Prosecutor's Office to pursue her exit ban, and they claimed ignorance, they themselves issued this order and notified the passport office.

"I will definitely protest."

Narges Mohammadi says she will definitely appeal the ruling: "My travel ban is illegal and I will sue those who illegally issued this order. This shows that there is a will beyond the law in the judicial and security system that can easily deprive people of their rights."

Narges Mohammadi has not seen her children since the beginning of her second prison term in 2015. Ali and Kiana went to France to be with their father, Taghi Rahmani, a month after their mother's arrest.

During this time, Narges Mohammadi was also deprived of telephone contact with her children for a total of two years: July 2015 to July 2016 and August 2019 to August 2020.

Ali and Kiana Rahmani have called in a video for their mother's travel ban to be lifted so that the two children can see their mother after more than five and a half years.

Source: DW