The parents and brother of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurd who died last year and who were supposed to posthumously receive the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded to the young victim, have been banned from leaving Iranian territory, according to their lawyer in France told AFP on Saturday.
“They were forbidden to board the flight that was supposed to take them to France for the Sakharov Prize ceremony and to leave the area at midnight yesterday, even though they had a visa,” explained Me Chirinne Ardakani. “Their passports have been confiscated,” she added.
The Sakharov Prize, the EU's highest honor for human rights, was awarded last October by the European Parliament to Mahsa Amini and the Femme Vie Liberté movement, which was bloodily repressed by the government in Iran.
The death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022 at the age of 22, three days after her arrest by police over an ill-fitting veil, led to months of large-scale demonstrations against Iranian political and religious leaders, including the crackdown causing hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests.
“At the same time as the Nobel Prize is being awarded, the Iranian authorities have never been more mobile in preventing the victims' families from speaking to the international community,” Mr Ardakani said.
“The brutal murder of Jina Mahsa Amini marked a turning point,” said Parliament Speaker Roberta Metsola at the awards ceremony.
“The slogan 'Woman Life Freedom' has become a rallying cry for everyone who advocates for equality, dignity and freedom in Iran,” she added.