Iran imprisons 2 women journalists for over 10 years on charges linked to Amini protests and US
- Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi were sentenced to 13 and 12 years, over coverage of death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini
- Charges, which they deny, include collaborating with the US government and acting against national security, after 22-year-old Amini died last year
An Iranian Revolutionary Court has handed out long prison sentences to two women journalists over their coverage of the death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini last year, state media reported on Sunday.
The death of 22-year-old Amini last September while in the custody of the morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic dress code unleashed months of mass protests across Iran, marking the biggest challenge to Iran’s clerical leaders in decades.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA said Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi were sentenced to 13 and 12 years in prison respectively on charges including collaboration with the US government and acting against national security.
Lawyers for the two journalists have rejected the charges.
“They received seven years and six years each respectively for collaborating with the hostile US government. Then each five years in prison for acting against the national security and each one year in prison for propaganda against the system,” IRNA reported.
Hamedi was detained after she took a picture of Amini’s parents hugging each other in a Tehran hospital where their daughter was lying in a coma and Mohammadi after she covered Amini’s funeral in her Kurdish hometown Saqez, where the protests began.
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Iranian police set up cameras in public sites to identify women defying compulsory dress code