A year after being captured and jailed for publishing about the young Kurdish girl Mahsa Jina Amini, Iranian journalists Nilufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi were sentenced yesterday to 13 and 12 years respectively on charges including “cooperation with hostile governments” -read the United States-, “crimes against national security” and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic”.
According to Iranian law, both must serve the highest sentence of the three for which they have been tried, in this case related to cooperation with Iran’s enemy states, which is seven and six years respectively. Additionally, Nilufar Hamedi, who turned 31 yesterday, has been banned from any activity on social networks and from working in the media for a period of one year after his release.
Yesterday’s announcement coincided with the news published by some local media about the fact that Armita Geravand, with a sad story that has strong similarities to that of Mahsa Amini, has suffered brain death. The 16-year-old disappeared on October 1 when she had just boarded the metro in Tehran, on her way to school. According to witnesses, Armita and two friends would have entered the station without a veil and had a run-in with security agents, but additional details are not public. She was taken to a government hospital, where she remains in a coma under strict security controls.
His parents assured public television that they watched all the videos and that there is no sign of aggression, but such statements are unreliable, as the authorities often pressure and threaten the families. One of the journalists who covered the story was jailed, but unlike Nilufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, he was quickly released.
Both journalists were captured days after the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, on September 16, 2022. The 22-year-old Kurdish girl had been captured by the morality police for allegedly not complying with Islamic dress codes . While at the police station, the young woman suffered a heart attack that ended her life three days later. Some witnesses said that she was hit when she was in the van that was transporting her while the authorities linked her death to a previous illness, a version that has been denied by her family.
Nilufar Hamedi, who works for the reformist newspaper Al-Sharq, was one of the first to report on the health of the 22-year-old when she was in the Kasra hospital in Tehran. A photo posted by Hamedi on social media, showing Mahsa’s parents hugging in the hospital corridor, was confirmation that the young woman, who was then brain dead, had died. The image increased the indignation of a sector of society, especially women and young people, who took to the streets to protest and gave rise to one of the most important mobilizations in Iran in recent decades.
In this same context, Elaheh Mohammadi took over from her colleague and friend, who was already under pressure at the time. Following the instructions of the director of his newspaper, also a reformist, he went to the Kurdish city of Saqqez in order to attend the funeral of Mahsa Amini. Both were captured a few days apart.
