Elahe Mohammadi wanted to write about the funeral for a young woman who died in police custody and to interview the mourning family as they buried their loved one. Instead, the newspaper reporter for Ham Mihan in Tehran was arrested, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international press advocacy organization.
After her arrest on Sept. 29, 2022, Iranian authorities broke into her house, searched it for two hours and confiscated her laptop, books, phone and press card, her lawyer Mohammad-Ali Kamfirouzi explained in a tweet posted on X, previously known as Twitter.
Mohammadi, 36, was charged with acting against Iran’s national security and for making propaganda against the government. She has been in prison for over a year.
On Oct. 22 Mohammadi was sentenced to 12 years in prison, six for allegedly collaborating with the U.S. government, five for acting against national security and one for “propaganda against the Islamic government.”
On Jan. 14, Mohammadi was granted temporary release on bail from Evin Prison, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Mohammadi had traveled to the city of Saqqez in the north-western Kurdish part of Iran to cover the funeral of the 22-year old Mahsa Amini, who died in the custody of the morality police on Sept. 16, three days after they detained her for not wearing her hijab correctly, according to numerous news reports at the time.
Iranian authorities later said that an investigation found she had died of “multiple organ failure caused by cerebral hypoxia, or lack of oxygen to the brain” which it attributed to “underlying diseases.”
After Amini’s death, Iranian women began a series of protests dubbed “Women, Life, Freedom Movement” against restrictions enforced against them by the strict Islamic government.
Ardeshir Tayebi, a reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. funded news organization, told CNS he believes her death was the tipping point for the start of the protests in Iran about women’s rights.
“During the ceremony, women inside the cemetery started chanting ‘women, life, freedom’ and started waving their headscarves in the air, removing their hijabs and started chanting slogans against the government,” he said.
Since the movement began, at least 95 journalists have been arrested in Iran, according to CPJ.
“Journalism in Iran is really an act of courage,” Jasmin Ramsey, the Deputy Director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran in New York City, told Capital News Service in an interview.
The 1979 Islamic revolution, which ousted the repressive, U.S.-backed government of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, ushered in a government based on Sharia law which restricts women’s rights. In February 1979, Shi’ite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a political and religious leader in exile, returned to Iran after 14 years.
After Iranian authorities held US Embassy employees hostage during the revolution, the two countries have had no formal diplomatic relationship.
In October 2022, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps released a statement blaming the United States for the month-long protests in Iran. It said Mohammadi received U.S. training in overthrowing the Iranian government.
The Iran interest section in the Swiss Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
Mohammadi was a politics and human rights reporter for the daily newspaper Ham Mihan. Throughout her career she has covered politics and societal issues for several Iranian media outlets, according to CPJ.
Mohammadi has a twin sister, Elnaz Mohammadi, who was also arrested but given a three-year suspended jail sentence. Since childhood the Mohammadi sisters have had a passion for writing, literature and poetry. They have worked together since 2022 at Ham Mihan, according to an article from press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
In 2023 Mohammadi and the other journalist arrested for covering Amini’s death, Niloofar Hamedi, were included in Time Magazine’s list of the world’s most influential people and awarded the United Nations’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize along with a third journalist.
Prison Life
Mohammadi is imprisoned in Evin prison, the main prison in Tehran. It holds journalists, political prisoners and people detained for alleged financial abuses.
Tayebi, the RFERL reporter, was held in Evin prison 10 years ago. He described it as “one of the best prisons in the country because there are lots of prisons where the situation is a lot worse.”
Evin, he said, has two sections: one controlled by the Ministry of Intelligence; the other by Revolutionary Guard Corps, the hard-core faction of the government. During interrogation sessions police try to make the detainee confess, said Tayebi, who said he endured psychological stress.
“I was held in solitary confinement which was actually a hell of an experience and a torture,” he said “…but they didn’t beat me or even touch me.”
On Jan. 14, Mohammadi was granted temporary release on bail from Evin Prison, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
In a photo capturing the celebration of their release, Mohammadi and Hamedi were seen not wearing hijabs and have been charged for not following the country’s hijab law, according to the Guardian.