Iranian security forces on Friday detained the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi along with at least eight other activists in an arrest condemned as “brutal” by the Norwegian Nobel committee.

Mohammadi, who was granted temporary leave from prison in December 2024, was detained along with eight other activists at the ceremony for lawyer Khosrow Alikordi, who was found dead in his office last week, her foundation wrote on X.

Those arrested at the ceremony in the eastern city of Mashhad included Mohammadi’s fellow prominent activist Sepideh Gholian, who had previously been jailed alongside her in Tehran’s Evin prison.

“These individuals were present solely to pay their respects and express solidarity at a memorial ceremony,” her foundation said, adding the arrests “constitute a blatant and serious violation of fundamental freedoms and basic human rights”.

“Narges was beaten on the legs and she was held by her hair and dragged down,” one of her brothers, Hamid Mohammadi, told AFP in Oslo where he lives.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it was “deeply concerned by today’s brutal arrest” of Mohammadi, calling on Iran to “immediately” clarify her whereabouts.

The arrest came two days after the ceremony in Oslo for the 2025 prize winner, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, a fierce critic of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who is an ally of Tehran.

The Nobel committee said it “notes” the timing “given the close collaboration between the regimes in Iran and Venezuela”.

Within Iran, the Mehr news agency cited the Mashhad governor Hassan Hosseini as saying the individuals were arrested at the ceremony after “chanting slogans deemed contrary to public norms” but did not name them.

Slogans at funeral

Alikordi, 45, was a lawyer who had defended clients in sensitive cases, including people arrested in a crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted in 2022.

His body was found on December 5, with rights groups calling for an investigation into his death, which Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights said “had very serious suspicion of a state murder”.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) posted footage of Mohammadi, who was not wearing the headscarf women are obliged to wear in public in the Islamic republic, attending the ceremony with a crowd of other supporters of Alikordi.

It said they shouted slogans including “Long live Iran,” “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation” and “Death to the dictator” at the ceremony which, in line with Islamic tradition, marked seven days since Alikordi’s death.

Other footage broadcast by Persian-language television channels based outside Iran showed Mohammadi climbing on top of a vehicle with a microphone and encouraging people to chant slogans.

“When peaceful citizens cannot mourn without being beaten and dragged away, it reveals a government terrified of truth and accountability. It also reveals the extraordinary bravery of Iranians who refuse to surrender their dignity,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran.

Years behind bars

Mohammadi, 53, who was last arrested in November 2021, has spent much of the past decade behind bars.

Her two twin children received the Nobel prize in Oslo on her behalf in 2023, and she has now not seen them for 11 years. Her temporary release in December 2024 was allowed on health grounds after problems related to her lungs and other issues.

“In prison, she had lots of complications. Her lungs, her heart, she has had some operations,” said Hamid Mohammadi.

“I’m not worried that she is arrested. She’s been arrested a lot of times, but what worries me most is that they will put a lot of pressure on her physical and psychological condition. And it might lead to again experiencing those complications,” he added.

Mohammadi has also regularly predicted the downfall of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, saying in a 19th birthday message to her twins last month that “they (the authorities) themselves live each day in fear of the fall that will inevitably come at the hands of the people of Iran”.

• Photos include Trump, Clinton, Bannon, Gates, and Summers.
• Republicans accuse Democrats of politicising investigation.
• Justice Department to release Epstein files by December 19.

WASHINGTON: Congressional Democrats released 19 new images from the estate of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, including photos of now-President Donald Trump, as a deadline for an extensive release of documents related to the disgraced financier nears.

Trump is featured in three of the photos shared by House Oversight Committee Democrats, who said they are reviewing more than 95,000 images produced by the estate.

In one black-and-white photo, Trump is seen smiling with several women — whose faces are redacted — on each side of him. A second image shows Trump standing beside Epstein, and a third, less-clear image shows him seated alongside another woman, whose face is also redacted, with his red tie loosened. It was not clear when or where the photos were taken.

“Everybody knew this man,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. “He was all over Palm Beach. He has photos with everybody. I mean, almost – there are hundreds and hundreds of people that have photos with him. So that’s no big deal.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Trump’s administration “has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have.”

“It’s time for the media to stop regurgitating Democrat talking points and start asking Democrats why they wanted to hang around Epstein after he was convicted,” she said.

Trump fanned Epstein conspiracies

The Epstein scandal has been a political headache for Trump for months, partly because he amplified conspiracy theories about Epstein to his own supporters. 

Many Trump voters believe Trump administration officials have covered up Epstein’s ties to powerful figures and obscured details surrounding his death, which was ruled a suicide, in a Manhattan jail in 2019.

The Justice Department said in July that there was no evidence to justify investigating any third parties in the Epstein case, and that it had found no “client list” or people who might have been involved in sex trafficking, or any evidence that Epstein had blackmailed anyone.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week found that just half of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the Epstein case, well below his overall 85% approval rating in his own party.

Trump and Epstein were friends during the 1990s and early 2000s, but Trump says he broke off ties before Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution charges.

Trump has consistently denied knowing about Epstein’s abuse and sex trafficking of underage girls.

Other men also shown

Democratic former President Bill Clinton, former Trump aide Steve Bannon, Bill Gates and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers also appear in the batch of images, as well as sex toys and a $4.50 “Trump condom” emblazoned with Trump’s face and the all-caps phrase “I’M HUUUGE!”

A spokesperson for the committee, which is led by Republican Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, said Democrats were politicising the investigation by “cherry-picking photos and making targeted redactions to create a false narrative about President Trump.”

Democrats said the tens of thousands of photos include “images of the wealthy and powerful men who spent time with Jeffrey Epstein” and “photographs of women and Epstein properties,” and more will be released in the coming days.

“These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the oversight committee, said in a statement. “We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”

The congressional Democrats said they redacted the women’s faces to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims.

The committee is continuing to obtain and release documents even as the US Department of Justice is expected to publicise unclassified Epstein files from its federal investigation late next week.

Trump signed into law last month an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill led by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California and Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky that compels the Justice Department to release the Epstein files within 30 days. December 19 will mark the end of that window.

American special forces carried out a raid last month on a cargo ship traveling from China to Iran in the Indian Ocean, seizing military-related materials, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The incident marks a rare and increasingly assertive maritime action under the administration of US President Donald Trump.

According to the report, the seized cargo included components considered potentially useful for Iran’s conventional weapons program. US officials said the shipment was destroyed following the operation.

The boarding took place several hundred miles off the coast of Sri Lanka and involved US special operations forces.

Officials noted that the seized items were dual-use materials, meaning they could have both civilian and military applications.

Unnamed officials told the newspaper that this was the first known interception in several years of cargo traveling from China to Iran.

After the interdiction, the vessel was allowed to continue its journey.

The operation occurred in November, weeks before US forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela earlier this week for alleged sanctions violations—another enforcement action Washington had not undertaken in years.

US Indo-Pacific Command did not immediately confirm the report.

Iran and China also did not respond, though Beijing has consistently criticized US sanctions on Tehran as illegal. China is one of Iran’s key trading partners.

Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun condemned the US seizure of the Venezuelan oil tanker, which was taken to a port in Texas on Friday.

He reiterated China’s opposition to what it calls unilateral and unlawful sanctions lacking authorization from the UN Security Council.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration has not ruled out further vessel seizures near Venezuela, amid broader US pressure on the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported that Iran has seized an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.

The Fars news agency said the vessel was carrying six million liters of smuggled diesel fuel and had 18 crew members on board from India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.

“The vessel had disabled all its navigation systems.”

Iranian forces regularly announce the interception of ships it says are illegally transporting fuel in the Gulf.

Retail fuel prices in Iran are among the lowest in the world, making smuggling it to other countries particularly profitable.

Iran seized an oil tanker in Gulf waters last month “for carrying an unauthorised cargo”, dismissing suggestions it was a retaliatory measure against another country.

The latest interception came two days after the United States seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.

According to Washington, the ship’s captain was transporting oil from Venezuela and Iran.

The US Treasury sanctioned Venezuela in 2022 for alleged ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.–Agencies