The 67-year-old Taghavi was arrested in October 2020 after years of campaigning for human rights, especially women's rights and freedom of expression in Iran. According to her daughter, Taghavi was held in solitary confinement for seven months and interrogated for more than a thousand hours without legal representation by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Service.

In August 2021, she was sentenced to ten years for "membership in an illegal group" and eight months for "propaganda against the regime". The federal government criticized the verdict as "incomprehensible".

According to her daughter, Taghavi was granted leave on July 19 this year for medical reasons. Accordingly, her mother suffers from herniated discs in her back and neck, carpal tunnel syndrome in her left hand and diabetes 2. Her health had deteriorated significantly after she was infected with the corona virus in July 2021.

The Iranian-born architect Taghavi has lived in Cologne since 1983 and has both Iranian and German citizenship.

Her mother is "one of countless political prisoners in the Islamic Republic," Claren explained. Since the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini and the ongoing revolutionary movement in Iran, "the whole world is witnessing the reprisals of this inhumane regime," she added. She and her family stand in solidarity with the Iranian people.

Amini was arrested by the vice squad in mid-September for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly. She died a short time later in hospital. Activists accuse the authorities of mistreating Amini. Her death sparked mass protests across the country.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had criticized the Iranian leadership over the weekend with unusually sharp words for the human rights violations there and defended the new sanctions planned by the EU. In view of the brutal crackdown on the protests that have been going on for weeks, the EU foreign ministers want to impose new sanctions on Iran on Monday.