Exclusive Report
Hamedi, Niloufar, and Muhammadi, Elaheh, arrested journalists; they were, respectively, arrested on Sept. 22 and 29, 2022; their arrest took place by the security forces and in response to their journalistic reports about the death and burial of Mahsa Amini (a young Kurdish woman from Saghez who got brutally murdered by the regime’s morality police on a short visit to Tehran). Niloufar Hamedi, photographer and journalist at Shargh Newspaper, was the first reporter to have taken presence at the hospital at which Mahsa Amini was hospitalized and had gone in coma, and published her photo in addition to a report on the battery and assault made against him by the suppressive morality police forces; she was arrested on Sept. 22, at her own house and by the security forces; in addition, Elaheh Muhammadi, a journalist at HamMihan Newspaper, who traveled to Saghez, Mahsa Amini’s hometown, where she participated in her funeral and published a report of this ceremony; she, too, was arrested on Sept. 29, when she was contacted and summoned for persecutions and got abducted on her way to be persecuted by the agents of the Ministry of Intelligence. After their arrest, and in an unprecedented move, they both became primary targets of a preposterous case-fabrication in a jointly published statement by two major intelligence organizations of the regime, that is, the Ministry of Intelligence and the intelligence division of IRGC; this statement maneuvers around a series of utterly baseless charges; it was published in reaction to the mass protests outbreak in Iran, and in it, these two journalists are charged with concocted accusations over having published the first photo of Mahsa Amini in coma on a hospital bed and the coverage of her funeral in Saghez, her hometown, and its following initial protests; the two intelligence organizations introduce these journalists as individuals trained by the “mafia regime of the US” in foreign countries and accuse them of playing the role of the lead-in spread of fake-news in favor of “foreign media.” Kambiz Nowroozi, a legalist, gives an interview to ILNA, a news agency in Iran, and mentions the following in response to their arrest and the joint statement in question: “unfortunately, we have no valid information about the cases of Elaheh Muhammadi and Niloufar Hamedi, and, as far as I know, their lawyer has not managed to get access to them. In fact, to our present knowledge, Elaheh Muhammadi and Niloufar Hamedi have carried out their professional duty…a journalist’s professional duty is to immediately take presence in the news-bearing site in which news need to be reported and then have it publised, this is the natural conduct of journalism by default and cannot be legally charged…the news or images published by them have not been, in principle, any classified or confidential information to be deemed unpublishable…What can be inferred, from a legal point of view, is that there has been no evidence of note published for the crime attributed to these two journalists; the details of the potential sentence are by no means predictable, since the statement issued is thus far the opinion of a non-judicial authority; this case requires to be carried through various judicial stages, the interrogator of the case must first complete his investigations and then proceed with the arraignment…I don’t know what charges will be arraigned by him. After that, the district court and, if needed, the court of appeals be held. The legal stages of this case will probably last long, but we hope that a fair legal proceeding takes place so that these journalists’ rights be not violated. When a journalist attains news in line with her professional duty and on behalf of its media organization, she has in fact simply carried out her professional and organizational duty; one cannot put blame on her for having visited the pertinent site to receive the news; a journalist working in an organization or press complex or non-press complex, for that matter, cannot refuse to carry out a given order.” However, in a series of objections to this joint statement, the Union of the Journalists of Tehran Province, issued a statement in which it stated the following: “the joint statement of the two main intelligence institutions about recent events held no implication other than the necessity of announcing the very act of journalism illegal and so criminalize it, since the ordinary activities of two of our colleagues doing the sheer basics of their job have been taken as examples for a charge that simply means the end of journalistic profession altogether; the two news activities referred to by these two institutes are among the most basic and obvious duties in the area of journalism; this is while one of the main roots of the problems in the country is the hazardousness or even the pure absence of carrying out these very activities. What this joint statement has introduced as the disease is in fact the remedy to the internal media…;” in addition, over 600 Iranian writers, too, published a statement and expressed their utter objection to such case-fabrications against these two journalists; moreover, more than 350 feminist and civil activists published another statement in solidarity with them. This aside, Reporters without Borders published a statement referring to the reporters recently arrested in Iran and stated that more than half of them have been women. This organizations also added that two of them were at risk of execution and, while asking for the immediate and unconditional release of them all, wrote: “the arrest of journalists, increasing day by day, symbolically demonstrates the intention of the Iranian regime to silence women systematically” and added “Reporters without Borders is profoundly concerned with the fate of these journalists who have been brave enough to reveal truths that the officials planned to conceal and now are exposed to the risk of very high costs including execution;” however, in a press release on Nov. 8, 2022, the judiciary spokesperson announced the charges against them and said “their case is on the verge of final decision;” “these two reporters were arrested for the charges of collusion and conspiracy against national security and propaganda against the regime and with the issuance of a temporary arrest order are in detention;” he added so regarding their charges. He also pointed at the “final decision” over their case and added: “if, in the course of the proceeding, with regard to these two reporters, any other charges be set forth, they will be proceeded and in case it becomes established that they have committed any other criminal act, it definitely will be proceeded as well.” The very manner in which their charges were articulated here suggested there has been a lack of sufficient evidence at the time of their initial arrest and also implies the determination of the judicial system to continue fabricating cases against them;” nevertheless, from the time of their initial arrest to this date, Feb. 15, 2023, these two journalists are still kept in detention without any clear legal resolution or proceeding; and from the day of arrest to this date, Feb. 15, 2023, everything pertinent to the circumstances of their case and conditions of detention, especially all the announcements made by their family members or lawyer, testifies unanimously to the depths of the blind grudge that the entire security-judiciary complex of the regime clearly holds against them to avenge the costs it had to bear for being unmasked by the revelation of the state-murder of Mahsa Amini and does not amount to anything more than a systemic abandonment of two innocent journalists at a corner of a prison cell and in an indefinite “temporary arrest” while dejecting their most basic human rights; just to sketch out this long illegal detention with a few examples, on Oct. 29, 2022, Said Parsayi, Elheh Muhammadi’s husband, tweeted the following: “My wife, Elaheh Muhammadi, contacted us. It has been 30 days since her arrest, 17 days of which was spent in solitary confinement and persecution, and the later 13 days in a public ward without persecutions and legal proceedings in wait for the writ of bail-deposit.” Also, as stated by the lawyer of both of these journalists, Muhammad Ali Kamfirouzi (himself arrested and kept in detention for some time due to the legal pursuit of the rights of some political prisoners related to Zhina (Mahsa Amini) Movement), when explicating the situation of their case, “…this is indeed a curious procedure; meaning, you have arrested an individual, and neither allow her to have visits, nor do clarify her charges, nor is it clear why she is arrested, nor do allow access to her lawyer, nor do even provide one simple and clear answer to her family and lawyer. This itself, in my view, resembles breaking the explicit law more than anything else…” Before that, on Oct. 15, 2022, Elaheh Muhammadi’s husband had tweeted that from the time of her arrest to that date, they had not had, in total, 10 minutes of phone-call and there had been no update on her charges; for many a successive day, she had not been allowed to make any contact with her family and they had been suffering from extreme concern, barred from access to any information; she also goes on hunger strike for some time in prison in protest to not being allowed to contact her family; In the same light, 46 days after Niloufar Hamedi’s arrest, her husband, Muhammad Hussein Ajorloo, conducted an interview with a news website and stated the following in response to the questions about the latest circumstances around her case and outcome of the follow-up’s made by her family and lawyer: “in the last 46 days, I have frequently gone to Evin Persecution Office, yet, like many other families of the arrestees of recent days, no clear answer has been provided to us. My wife’s lawyer, Muhammad Ali Kamfirouzi, has neither been allowed to talk to her client nor enter the Persecution Office to run legal affairs;” also, by adding that “based on what my wife has disclosed to me in her last contact on Nov. 3, 2022, persecutions have been terminated, yet her writ of detention is extended to the end of the same month, which, given the fact that the proceedings of the case are finalized, this extension is illegal and my wife has objected to it for the same reason.” In addition, both husbands of the two journalists, that is, Ajorloo and Parsayi, conducted an interview with Ensaf News, a news agency based in Iran, in which they pointed out their latest status and announced: “Elaheh has given her defense statement but there has been no indictment issued as of yet; also the writ of arrest of Niloufar Hamedi was been extended to Dec. 20, 2023;” they also added that not only their families, but also their lawyer have been barred from entering Evin Persecution Office. Also, while pointing out that Elaheh had been kept in solitary confinement for 17 days, they added that “she had developed skin infection while in detention and barred from proper treatment and not transferred to the infirmary despite frequent requests;” their situation, however, remains relentlessly unchanged and, for instance, they are both still kept in indefinite detention in Gharchak-eh Varamin Prison and security forces have, in the course of Elaheh Muhammadi’s detention, moved her to and from this prison more than once; also, according to IFJ (the International Federation of Journalists), on Feb. 10, 2023, her husband tweeted: “Elaheh was retransferred to Gharchak-eh Varamin once more. I hope that this is the last announcement we make about her arrest and from now, such announcements only inform of her freedom” and continued by wishing for the release of all detainees, and mentioned Elnaz Muhammadi, Elaheh’s twin sister and journalist colleague, herself arrested for some time this Feb., Niloufar Hamedi, the other journalist arrested, and Samaneh Asghari, the arrested civil activist; this re-transference to Gharchak-eh Varamin Prison took place while two days prior to that, her husband had announced her transference to Evin Prison, yet there has been no update on the reason of such between-prison transferences. It is quite clear that, long after their arrest, there has been still no clear development in their situation in a way that, Mhummad Ajorloo, Niloufar’s husband, recently and in response to the enquiries about the possibility of her release in the course of the public pardon order of the judiciary system issued for political prisoners and protestors arrested during Woman, Life, Freedom Movement, said: “the news of serial releases are published and gratify me too. Many of you have asked about Niloufar’s release, yet our fate is brushed off with a different stroke. Her temporary detention and irresoluble situation still goes on.” “Today, at the end of the 20th week of her arrest, we just had a short visit. There is still no update on a court hearing or conversion of the writ of arrest to a writ of deposit-bail, and we still have to feel content with a 20-min long weekly visit in the prison meeting cabin,” he added. In any case, this situation further admits the lock upon the fate of these two journalists since, as mentioned above, even with the issuance of the so-called “public pardon” and release of many political prisoners and many cases pertinent to the protestors of Iran’s current movement being closed, still the judiciary spokesman has very recently, that is, on Feb. 15, 2023, in reply to a question asked in a press release about the circumstances of their cases and the possibility of their inclusion in the public pardon circular, stated that “pardon is criterial and cases are adjusted with criteria and, by considering exceptions, will be brought to resolution. The adjustment task is being carried out, you must be patient; in future days, the resolution will be materialized.” Yet, the implication of such a statement is simply that these two journalists will not be most probably even included in the current public pardon; at the end, one must point out that these two journalists have created many significant reports in the area of their journalist activities about the social crises especially directed toward women including poverty, addiction, child-marriage, and honor-killing; for instance, Niloufar Hamedi had once published the images of another crime committed by the regime’s morality police on Apr. 28, 2022, in which the forces of this police unit had directly shot down the husband of a woman they have been pressuring over her “improper” hijab, and then, later, she also conducted an interview with this couple for Shargh Newspaper and revealed that the police organization had charged them for hijab dress-code violation and insubordination to the order of an official state agent and so excused the transgressive officer; likewise, Elaheh Muhammadi had published a report in the same newspaper, titled “Honor as a Code to Kill” (about frequent honor-killing cases in Iran) which was nominated as one of the best reports of the year by the Union of Journalists of Tehran Province; also, most recently, on Feb. 14, 2023, and while still in detention, they were jointly awarded the International Award for Press Freedom; Toronto Star news agency informed that the award in question has been given to them in absentia by the Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Speech in praise of their bravery and being reminiscent of how fragile the freedom and power of press can be. Yet, all the evidence we have at hand testifies that they have committed no crime other than shedding light on the ruins that the theocratic and patriarchal reactionary politics of the ruling class have left behind in women’s discriminatory conditions and social life, and the limitless grudge that its security, judicial, and media organizations and agents hold against them directly roots back to the unmasking of the simple fact that it has turned Iran into a consequence-free woman slaughterhouse and a piece of fertile land for general harassment and violence against them within the context of a full-fronted gender-apartheid; let’s conclude by remembering that those angels guarding the truth can be enchained, but the truth itself cannot.
