Mahshid Nazemi, an Iranian human rights activist, left her home one day in the fall of 2022 to walk to the corner store to buy yogurt for dinner. The sun had set in the valley in Isparta, a city in southwestern Turkey, and the air was crisp. Nazemi pulled the hat of her coat over her head. The streets were empty. She was tired and hungry.

Suddenly, she saw two cars turn on their lights.A dated, navy-colored sedan with tinted windows drove behind her slowly as she walked. Nazemi became suspicious and stopped. The car braked and a pudgy, bearded man with a khaki shirt exited, cursing at her, calling her a prostitute.

“Shut your mouth or we’ll send you to Iran in a suitcase,” Nazemi recounted the man saying. “Your sister is on death row. You want to go to Iran in a suitcase?”

Nazemi froze and then ran for help.

A year later, she stood at the exact spot in Isparta, known for its roses and lavenders, as she retold her ordeal.

Nazemi’s case underscores a broader pattern of Iranian activists abroad facing intimidation and pressure from Tehran, despite the regime’s public denials of involvement.

For Nazemi, she says her plight began long ago as a woman in Iran, where women don’t have equal rights, and the situation has been likened to gender apartheid. Women can’t sing in public, their supreme leader has said riding a bike is shameful — though some women defy the taboo and ride bikes — their testimony is considered half of a man’s in court and their right to inheritance is less than men.

Nazemi has survived a lot — imprisonment, sexual harassment, death threats and a deportation camp.

The night she was followed and harassed in the street would be a prelude to a series of dubious events terrorizing her life as a dissident in exile.

During the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in fall 2022, protests erupted in Iran and in the diaspora after Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, was arrested on charges of breaking Iran’s modest dress code. Amini was then beaten to death while in custody.

At that time, Nazemi was in Turkey, which has become an opposition haven for many Iranians.

She was speaking out about political prisoners and crackdowns on protesters, while also helping dissidents in Turkey get legal aid and financial support. She’s been a dogged activist on behalf of women in her native Iran.

Nazemi wasn’t doing that work alone. Her oldest sister Pouran Nazemi was at the forefront of the movement in Tehran.

The renowned human rights defender has been in and out of Iranian prisons throughout her life. Nazemi said it was Pouran’s sacrifices that encouraged her to become an activist, too.

Nazemi played a video her sister Pouran made for her while on the run in Iran.

“Our hearts are so linked. I’m so appreciative and grateful for all that you’ve done,”Pouran said in the video, sitting next to a waterfall in the forest. 

The sisters participated in previous uprisings in Iran, demanding democratic rights for women and minorities. They were both arrested in 2016, but Mahshid Nazemi was released. Her family told her to flee, so she went to neighboring Turkey and applied for asylum to a third country. When Pouran was also released from jail, she remained in Iran.

But the sisters worked as a team online across the border. They talked to the opposition media, like Voice of America Farsi, making a case for regime change and a revolution.

Instead, the hardline clerical government arrested 22,000 protesters, including Pouran once again in 2022. The government also killed about 550 people inside Iran, calling them traitors and agitators. Then the regime came for those in the diaspora.

“Iran continues to target women human rights defenders abroad, and among the typical and easy-to-use methods are digital threats, such as phishing and hacking attempts, smear and defamation campaigns, as well as threats against family members in Iran,” said Marcus Michaelsen, who studies Iran and transnational repression at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

Nazemi has been the victim of all these tactics but she said the regime went a step further in sending their thugs to threaten her in person that evening in 2022.

She reported the incident to the Turkish police, but they didn’t believe her until they found CCTV footage of the incident.

A few days later, a Turkish immigration agent called and asked her to come to their office. She thought she might be getting asylum to a third country, somewhere safer than Turkey. But instead, the agent accused her of making a fake ID card, which Nazemi denied. It’s a scene she remembers vividly.

“I didn’t make a fake card. I’m not going to admit to something I didn’t do. If you want to deport me, do so,” Nazemi told the agent.

Nazemi was detained and moved into a deportation camp.

“The Islamic Republic must have informants in Turkish immigration offices. Otherwise, how would I have ended up in a deportation camp, right after reporting what happened about that night,” she said.

The Turkish government has arrested people in its own government for the kidnappings of Iranian dissidents in the last several years.

In the camp, Nazemi said the guards beat her, pulling out half of her hair. Another Iranian migrant, who was also detained, accused her of being transgender and threw soup in her face. Nazemi said she had to disrobe in front of the other detainees to prove she was a biological woman to prevent more abuse. She said the camp almost broke her. She had medication with her and one day she took a lot of pills at once.

“I didn’t take them to die, actually, but to prove something, how badly they treated us that it got me to this point,” Nazemi said.

Nazemi was hospitalized outside the camp, doctors pumped her stomach and she recovered. Police released her and she returned to Isparta and appealed the deportation. Turkey denied the appeal again, but by this time Nazemi’s story was out in the Western press.

The World shared her story, along with press coverage she received in the French newspaper Le Monde — that attention helped her get a visa to France after eight years of being stuck in the Turkish asylum system.

She resettled in a French village in December 2023, and continued her activism — Nazemi has expanded her cause to advocate for Afghan migrants as well.

In France, Nazemi has leveraged her network and met in-person diplomats and leaders in the opposition. She works with international human rights organizations to research and help political dissidents get visas. 

As much as the Nazemi hopes for regime change, her goals have shifted to more urgent matters: stopping executions of political prisoners, or deportations of dissident Iranians from other countries to Iran.

Life is easier in France, but Nazemi said she still looks over her shoulder when she walks down the street.

She still gets death threats on social media. Many of the senders say they are the “soldiers of the Islamic Republic.” The direct messages in her inbox on Instagram threaten her with execution, drowning, even rape. Nazemi is under French police protection and reports all the threats.

Her sister Pouran, was released from Evin prison, and is awaiting trial on charges of moral corruption. She continues to protest the regime’s brutality against dissidents inside Iran with Nazemi. 

Three years after the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, many women don’t wear a headscarf in public anymore in Iran. Some are singing on the metro trains, riding motorcycles and dancing in public. The regime can still punish them under the law, but often looks the other way. Nazemi said that’s a small win but she will persist with her sister for the bigger win of democratic freedom.

“The most important thing to come out of this movement was that it showed how influential women can be inside Iran, it became an example,” she said. “People learned the power of civil disobedience and it gave them confidence and courage.”