Iranian courts have reduced the prison sentences of two female journalists accused of collaborating with the United States, their lawyers told reformist newspapers on Sunday.
Elaheh Mohammadi, 37, and Niloufar Hamidi, 31, are out on bail after serving more than a year in Tehran’s Evin prison for their coverage of the custodial death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, which sparked nationwide protests.
In January, Iran’s judiciary said it had launched new proceedings against the two women for posing for photographs without the mandatory hijab after their release that month.
Two separate appeals courts in Tehran ruled to acquit the women of charges of collaborating with the United States, the Shargh and Ham Mihan dailies reported, citing lawyers.
According to the judiciary, Mohammadi was originally sentenced to six years in prison, while Hamidi was sentenced to seven years.
Both were sentenced to five years each for collusion and conspiracy against state security and one year for propaganda against the Islamic Republic.
The lawyers said the sentences were upheld by an appeals court and would be served concurrently. However, they also said they hoped the journalists would be released under an amnesty announced last year by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Considering that the remaining two charges meet all the conditions of the 2023 amnesty directive, we hope that Elaheh Mohammadi will be pardoned, and the case will be closed by issuing an order for the suspension of execution,” Mohammadi’s lawyer, Shahab Mirlohi, told Ham Mihan newspaper.
Hamidi’s lawyers also issued a similar statement.
Shargh photographer Hamidi was arrested less than a week after Amini’s death after he posted a photo of the young woman’s grieving family on social media.
Mohammadi, a reporter for Ham Mihan, was arrested when he went to cover Amini’s funeral, which turned into a protest, in her hometown of Saqez, in the western Iranian province of Kurdistan.
Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, was arrested for violating strict dress codes for women that have been in place in Iran since shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
His death sparked months of protests across Iran, in which hundreds of people, including dozens of security personnel, were killed and thousands of protesters were arrested.
Nine people were executed in cases related to the protests, which Iranian authorities generally described as “foreign-inspired riots”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
