CPJ has documented the names of journalists arrested in Iran amid protests over the death in morality-police custody of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, arrested for allegedly violating the country’s conservative dress law.
This list, current as of September 29, 2022, is based on information obtained from CPJ’s sources inside Iran, media reports, and the Tehran Journalists Association. It will be updated as new information becomes available.
1) Yalda Moaiery, photojournalist
Moaiery, writing on Instagram Stories from a van taking her to jail, said she was beaten and arrested on September 19 while covering protests on Hejab street in downtown Tehran. According to the exile news website IranWire, Moaiery said conditions in Qarchak prison, a female-only detention facility in the city of Varamin, southeast of Tehran, were “horrible,” with more than 100 women crammed into a tight space. “There are only 3 bathrooms for their use and prison authorities prescribe many tranquilizers for the prisoners,” she said.
2) Niloofar Hamedi, reporter for the Tehran-based semi-reformist Shargh Daily
Hamedi was among the first journalists to report on Amini’s hospitalization, according to a report by the exile-run news website IranWire. Her lawyer, Mohammad-Ali Kamfirouzi, tweeted Sunday that Hamedi was able to make a phone call to her husband and say that she is in solitary confinement and being interrogated in Tehran’s Evin prison. She had not been told of any charges against her.
3) Iman Behpasand, political commentator, columnist, and women’s issues reporter
4) Behzad Vafakhah, cultural and political columnist
5) Ruhollah Nakhaee, foreign policy reporter
6) Alireza Khoshbakht, political reporter
7) Zahra Tohidi, political reporter
8) Fatemeh Rajabi, economics reporter, arrested in her home in Tehran
9) Mojtaba Rahimi, a political reporter arrested in his home in the city of Qazvin following tweets about several protesters killed in and around his hometown.
10) Majid Tavakoli, political commentator and columnist, arrested in his Tehran home.
11) Marzieh Talaee, a Kurdish reporter for Mukrian News Agency arrested in the city of Saqqez in Kurdistan province, arrested on September 22
12) Masoud Kordpour, editor-in-chief of the Kurdish Mukrian News Agency
13) Khosrow Kordpour, editor and reporter with the Kurdish News website Mukrian New Agency, brother of Masoud Kordpour
14) Elahe Mohammadi, a reporter with the state-run Hammihan Daily. According to a tweet by her lawyer Mohammad-Ali Kamfirouzi, she was arrested on September 22. According to the lawyer, security forces broke the entrance door to her house and confiscated her personal devices such as laptop, books, phone, and her press card.
15) Elnaz Mohammadi, political reporter with semi-state- state-run bi-monthly Andishepouya magazine; twin sister of Elahe Mohammadi
16) Vida Rabbani, political commentator recently sentenced to ten years and four months in prison and banned from practicing journalism
17) Hamed Shafiei, political and social reporter
18) Ahmadreza Halabisaz, photojournalist
Halabisaz was arrested in downtown Tehran on September 22 while he was photographing the protests. A few hours after his arrest, he was permitted to call his family and tell them that he was taken to Evin prison, BBC Persian service reported.
19) Sarvenaz Ahmadi, freelance political and cultural reporter, who recently reported on forced child labor
20) Seyed Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, blogger
21) Elmira Bahmani, freelance reporter, commentator, and columnist on women’s rights issues, was arrested on September 26 in the northern city of Rasht in Gilan province
22) Batol Balali, a reporter with the state-run Pasargad weekly magazine, was arrested on September 22 in the southern city of Sirjan, in Kerman province while covering protests in her hometown. Ashkan News a local news website based in Kerman, reported that she was taken to Sirjan central prison.
23) Samira Alinejad, a reporter with the state-run local news website SirjanRavi News, was also arrested while covering the same September 22 demonstration in the southern city of Sirjan, according to Ashkan News. She is currently detained in Sirjan central prison.
24) Jabbar Dastbaz, a Kurdish freelance reporter who reports on women’s issues, was arrested on September 22 in the city of Sanandaj in Kurdistan province. Sources told CPJ security forces beat him on the street in front of his house.
25) Mehrnoosh Tafian, a freelance politics reporter, was arrested in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, in the majority Arab province Khuzestan, according to IranWire and CPJ sources.
26) Farshid Ghorbanpour, a political and literary columnist and commentator who writes for HaftSobh (7sobh) daily newspaper, was arrested in a 3 a.m. security force raid on his Tehran home on September 29. Sources told CPJ he was beaten and taken from the house with a bleeding head wound.
27) Aria Jaffari, an award-winning photojournalist for Iranian Students News Agency, ISNA, was arrested on September 28 in the central city of Isfahan.
28) Mobin Balouch, a freelance reporter, was arrested earlier on September 29 in the city of Baluchistan in the southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.
Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director | Radio Free (2022-09-30T14:38:17+00:00) Names of journalists arrested in Iran’s anti-state protests. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/30/names-of-journalists-arrested-in-irans-anti-state-protests/
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