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
Iranian police set up cameras in public sites to identify women defying compulsory dress code
IRNA said the “issued verdicts” were subject to appeal.
If confirmed, the time the women have already spent at the Evin jail, where most political prisoners are held, would be deducted from the sentences, according to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency.
A statement released by Iran’s intelligence ministry in October last year accused Mohammadi and Hamedi of being agents for the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
“There is documented evidence of Hamedi and Mohammadi’s intentional connections with certain entities and individuals affiliated with the US government,” Mizan reported.
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Meanwhile, a teenage Iranian girl, who fell into a coma this month following an alleged encounter with officers over violating the country’s hijab law, is said to be “brain dead”, Iranian state media reported on Sunday.
“Follow-ups on the latest health condition of Armita Geravand indicate that her health condition as brain dead seems certain despite the efforts of the medical staff,” the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network said.
Iranian authorities have denied claims by rights groups that the 16-year-old was hurt after a confrontation on October 1 with officers enforcing the mandatory Islamic dress code in the Tehran metro.