Nobel peace laureate Narges Mohammadi has been beaten nearly to death while imprisoned in Iran, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Wednesday.

The committee said it had received “credible reports” of “life-threatening mistreatment” of Mohammadi, an activist arrested by Tehran in December, CNN reported.

Mohammadi has been allegedly beaten with wooden sticks and batons, dragged by her hair until sections of her scalp tore, and “repeatedly kicked in the genitals and pelvic region, leaving her unable to sit or move without severe pain,” the committee said.

The savage beatings occurred during her arrest in December after she attended a ceremony honoring Khosrow Alikordi, an Iranian lawyer and human rights advocate. 

During the arrest, witnesses say they saw Iran’s security forces beat the activist as they loaded her onto a transport vehicle, where the violence allegedly continued. 

Mohammadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023, has spent much of the last two decades as an inmate in Iran’s infamous Evin prison.  

While her original prison sentence was suspended last year to allow her to recover from a surgery following multiple heart attacks, she was sentenced on Saturday to another seven years in prison on allegations of “gathering and collusion” and spreading propaganda, according to her lawyer. 

Mohammadi had begun a hunger strike in early February to protest her “unlawful detention, dire prison conditions, and the denial of contact with her family and lawyers,” according to her foundation. 

Mohammadi had been allowed to go to the hospital last week, but she has since been transferred back to a detention center in Mashhad before her treatment was complete, her lawyer told CNN. 

Like Tehran’s Evin prison, the detention centers in Mashhad have been at the center of allegations of human rights abuses, particularly against political prisoners and anti-regime activists.