RSF calls on Iran’s judiciary to dismiss the prison summons for journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi — and drop all charges against them
Provisionally released in January after 17 months in detention, journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi have been summoned by the Iranian judiciary to serve prison sentences. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Iranian authorities to drop the charges against these journalists once and for all.
Shargh Daily correspondent Niloofar Hamedi and Ham-Mihan correspondent Elaheh Mohammadi will likely return to prison in a few days' time. Despite their provisional release on bail in January pending the verdict of their appeal — and regardless of being exonerated of the charge of collaborating with the US government — their five-year prison sentences have been upheld due to two outstanding charges against them: “conspiring and colluding to commit a crime against national security” and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic”.
On 13 October 2024, an Iranian judge ruled that these two emblematic Iranian journalists — jailed in 2022 for reporting on Mahsa Amini’s death and the resulting Woman, Life, Freedom movement — should go back to prison, without specifying a date.
Speaking to the country's popular daily newspaper, Shargh Daily, on Saturday, 19 October, Hamedi's lawyer stated that the court had requested Hamedi be imprisoned “within five days.” The daily Ham-Mihan reported that Mohammadi had also received notice that her five-year prison sentence would begin within the same timeframe.
"This judicial farce continues to persecute two of the country's most emblematic women journalists. Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi have already spent 17 months behind bars for their journalism, and an additional nine months suspended between freedom and detention, threatened with imprisonment at any moment. That moment has arrived. We condemn their ordered return to prison, and call on the Iranian judiciary to drop all charges against them, and grant them full and unconditional freedom.
Mass mobilisation to protect these journalists
Thousands of prominent Iranian figures are also calling for the two journalists to be pardoned and the cases against them to be dropped. In response to the summons, a letter signed by hundreds of journalists, artists and activists was sent to the head of the judiciary asking him to halt the execution of the sentence.
Iran: one of the biggest jailors of women journalists
At least five women journalists have been detained in Iran since 16 September 2022, when Kurdish student Mahsa Amini died in police custody in Teheran; they are all paying the price for reporting on the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Arrested on 22 September 2022 for breaking the story of Mahsa Amini's death from the hospital, Niloofar Hamedi was among the first to be locked up. Seven days later, she was joined by Elaheh Mohammadi, the only journalist to have covered Mahsa Amini’s funeral in Saqqez.
Narges Mohammadi is also among Iran’s five detained women journalists. A journalist and women's rights activist imprisoned several times over the past 13 years, she has been deprived of medical care for weeks, according to her relatives. Like several of her fellow journalists, Narges Mohammadi is currently held in the notorious Evin prison, where Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi may be ordered to report on Thursday.
