Nilufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, two Iranian journalists who informed about the death of the young Kurdish Yina Mahsa Amini in September 2022 – a fact that triggered a wave of strong protests throughout the country – have been pardoned by the highest judicial authority of the country, Mizan has reported on Tuesday, the news agency of the Judiciary. The grace measure, granted on the occasion of the 46th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, which is fulfilled this February 11, is part of a list of pardons approved by the supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatolá Ali Jameneí.
The work of these two professionals was key for the Iranian society to know the death of Amini, 22, arrested in front of a Tehran subway station and accused of carrying the mandatory veil “inappropriate.” The young woman left ambulance and already in a coma of the police station in the Iranian capital to which she was led and died at the Kasra hospital three days later, on September 16, 2022, without having regained consciousness. Hamedi took a picture of the parents of the young Kurdish, who cried hugging in a corridor of that Tehran health center, and shared it in his X account (formerly Twitter). The journalist was arrested by the Iranian authorities six days later.
The other informant, Mohammadi, covered Amini’s burial in his hometown of Saqqez, in the Iranian Kurdistan, after which he was also arrested. The State accused them of “cooperation with the American government hostile, collusion against national security and propaganda against the regime.” Both were acquitted in appeal of the first position, but the other two accusations earned them sentences to 13 and 12 years in prison, respectively, by an Iranian revolutionary court.
In January 2024, Hamedi and Mohammadi were released on bail – they paid the equivalent of 178,000 euros, according to EFE – after spending 17 months in isolation in the Evin prison. This prison is known for housing political prisoners and being partly under the control of the intelligence services of the powerful parallel army of the Revolutionary Guard. The two journalists left the hand, making the sign of Victoria with their hands and without carrying the Islamic veil, for mandatory use in the country.
This last decision motivated, one day after his release, a new accusation by the Prosecutor’s Office, which opened another case against them for violating the law that forces the Iranians to cover their hair since the age of nine, sometimes, before.
Amini’s death – which the independent research mission about Iran attributed to “physical violence” while it was arrested – caused mass manifestations that, without being the most massive in the history of the Islamic Republic, were the ones that rolled up more direct against the Islamic regime, whose overthrow many protesters claimed.
The authorities then unleashed a repression in which at least 551 people died, 60,000 were arrested and at least ten men hanged in relation to the demonstrations, according to the UN mission, which accused Iran of committing “crimes against humanity” .
The protests later mutated in a movement of civil disobedience by which thousands of Iranians dispensed with the Hiyab. As reported by the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, almost a hundred reporters and photographers were arrested for doing their job during those mobilizations. At least 80 then recovered bail.
