IRANIAN human rights activist Narges Mohammadi says she “does not recognise” her new sentence of eight years and two months in jail plus 74 lashes, saying it is unlawful.

The veteran campaigner penned a letter from Qarchak women’s prison in Tehran, saying she is being punished for “foreign conspiracy against the Islamic Republic of Iran” merely for having been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Amnesty International Norway.

She says her prosecution, trial and sentence are a “completely illegal, illegitimate, inhuman and immoral act that contravenes all laws and regulations.”

Ms Mohammadi was denied a lawyer and refused visitors or a phone call. She says a hearing on January 12 took less than five minutes and she was not even able to examine the case against her, but received a verdict three days later, which alongside the new prison sentence and flogging bans her from residing in Tehran, joining any “socio-political group” and using any social media.

She called on foreign human rights campaigns not to “forget and ignore this naked repression.”

Ms Mohammadi was originally jailed in 2016 for campaigning against the death penalty, but was released in 2020.

However, she was sentenced to two-and-a-half years last year for “propaganda against the system” while still at liberty and then arrested again last November when attending a memorial ceremony for a protester killed by security forces, Ebrahim Ketabdar.

This week, the World Federation of Democratic Youth called for the release of two university students in Iran who have been detained since April 10 2020 and apparently tortured. They are feared to be awaiting execution.