Cheers and hugs greeted the two Iranian journalists who had been imprisoned for over a year on espionage charges outside Tehran's notorious Evin prison yesterday. Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi had told the world the true story of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish girl who was arrested and killed for wearing her headscarf poorly. Yesterday, just released on bail after 17 months of solitary confinement, they appeared smiling, unbending, their hair in the wind, their fingers raised in a V in a sign of victory: as if to say that they have not given up on us. Images shared on social media are full of symbolic value. It doesn't matter that this is a temporary freedom: you cannot stay in prison or leave the country until the appeal process, the date of which has not yet been set.
Writer and activist Masih Alinejad has no doubts about the reasons that led to their release: “Now that we are close to the elections (parliamentary elections in March, editor's note), the regime wants a good image of “On Saturday they even announced that it would be possible to vote without a hijab,” he tells Corriere.
Hamedi, 31, was the first to break the news of Mahsa Amini's coma and subsequent death on September 16, 2022: her news sparked the most violent and widespread protest since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1979. She is the author of the photos of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman blindfolded and injured in the hospital and hugging her parents in the ward after her death. As a consummate photojournalist, Hamedi had managed to sneak into the Tehran hospital where Mahsa had been admitted after her arrest; He took the photos, spoke to the girl's parents and persuaded them not to accept the authorities' version of events. “They did not allow us to know the results of the autopsy, they ordered us not to talk to any journalists, they asked us to secretly bury Mahsa, they tried to convince us that our daughter had an incurable and previous illness: “That’s not true,” they had revealed to her.
Mohammadi, 36, had talked about Mahsa's funeral. It was she who first spread the Kurdish slogan, which resonated around the world and became a symbol of the fight for rights: “Woman, Life, Freedom”. In October, she was sentenced to six years for collaborating with the United States, five years for conspiring against the country's security and one year for propaganda against the Islamic Republic. Similar sentences for Hamedi, with an additional year for the first “crime” of collaborating with the US.
“There was enormous international pressure on these journalists, now the same should be exerted on the other prisoners,” says Alinejad. Of the 22,000 people arrested since the protests began, many are still in prison.”