An Iranian revolutionary court this Sunday sentenced journalists Nilufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, who revealed the case of Mahsa Amini, to 13 and 12 years in prison respectively for cooperation with the hostile United States Government and two other crimes.
Hamedi was the first journalist to report on Amini’s arrest for not wearing the Islamic veil and her subsequent death on September 16, 2022, and Mohammadi covered the funeral of the 22-year-old girl, where the protests that shook the country began. for months.
Hamedi, the reformist Shargh newspaper, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for cooperation with the United States and Mohammadi, of the Hammihan newspaper, to six years for the same crime, reported the Mizan agency of the Judiciary.
In addition, they have been sentenced to five more years for collusion against national security and another year behind bars for disseminating propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The two informants will have to serve the longest sentences, that is, seven years in the case of Hamedi, and six in that of Mohammadi, according to Mizan.
In addition, they are prohibited from working for the media, belonging to political parties and using social networks for two years. They have 20 days to appeal the court decision to a higher court.
Both informants were arrested in September and have spent a good part of their detention in solitary confinement, according to their families.
The trials against the two journalists began at the end of May behind closed doors and they were only allowed to meet with their lawyers the day before.
Hamedi published a photo of Amini in the hospital, when she was in a coma and intubated, and days later he published another image of the young woman’s parents hugging in the hospital hallway upon learning of their daughter’s death.
Mohammadi covered Amini’s funeral in his town of Saqez, Kurdistan, where protests began and the first scarves were burned on September 17.
Almost a hundred journalists and photographers were detained for carrying out their work during the mobilizations in Iran, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, of whom 80 informants have been released on bail.
Amini’s death sparked strong protests that for months called for the end of the Islamic Republic and only disappeared after a repression that caused 500 deaths, the arrest of at least 22,000 people and in which seven protesters were executed, one of them in public.
The first anniversary of Amini’s death was commemorated on September 16 amid strong repression and a huge deployment of security forces, and only timid protests took place.
In recent months, the Iranian Government has been trying to reimpose the use of the veil, with the presence of patrols in the streets, the denial of services and the approval of a law that toughens punishments for not covering one’s hair.
