Iranian authorities have announced that two young female journalists, Niloufar Hamidi and Elaheh Mohammadi, who were sentenced to long prison sentences for reporting on the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini by the ‘Morality Police’ on the pretext that she did not cover herself according to Islamic rules have been cleared of charges of collaboration with the US government, but will serve up to five more years in prison.

Niloufar Hamidi and Elaheh Mohammadi were initially tried on charges of ‘co-operation and assembly against national security’ and ‘propaganda activities against the regime’ and sentenced to 13 and 12 years in prison respectively.

The journalists, who were released in January after 17 months in pre-trial detention, were acquitted of the charge of ‘co-operation with the United States’, after which their sentences were reduced to five years each.

Human rights activists reported that Iran continued to target and sentence participants in nationwide protests following the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini two years later.

In August, Iran executed 10 protesters, including Xulamreza Rezaie, who was found guilty of murdering a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

According to Human Rights Watch, relatives of those killed, executed, or imprisoned during the ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ (Woman, Life, Freedom) demonstration were also arrested, threatened, and harassed by the Iranian state.

Background

Jina Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police on 13 September 2022 on one of Tehran’s streets for wearing her hijab “inappropriately”.

Less than two hours after being taken to the Morality Police building on Vozara Street in Tehran, she was taken to Kasra Hospital in an unconscious state due to the severity of the blows to her head inflicted by the officers.

According to published reports, Amini was brain-dead when she was hospitalised. She died three days later, on 16 September, at Kasra Hospital in Tehran.

Although the Islamic Republic, as usual, announced Amini’s cause of death as “a heart attack caused by an underlying illness”, her family rejected this claim, insisting that their child was perfectly healthy before her arrest.

Several eyewitnesses among the detainees in the same van that took Amini to a detention centre, later confirmed that police officers used violence and beat the young woman severely, fracturing her skull.