Iranian journalist Mohammad Mir-Ghasemzadeh arrested as authorities ramp up legal pressure on media
Washington, D.C., November 30, 2023—Iranian authorities must immediately release journalist Mohammad Mir-Ghasemzadeh and cease jailing journalists for simply doing their job, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. On Monday, security agents with the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence Ministry arrested Mir-Ghasemzadeh, a local reporter in the northern city of Sowme’eh Sara in Gilan province, and took…
Iran arrests 2 female environmental journalists in mass raids
Washington, D.C., November 14, 2023—Iranian authorities must immediately release journalists Nasim Tavafzadeh and Helaleh Nategheh and stop trying to silence journalists by jailing them, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday. On Saturday, intelligence agents with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrested Tavafzadeh, editor-in-chief of the local news website Moroor.org, and Nategheh, an environmental reporter…
Iranian journalist Manijeh Moazen arrested
Washington, D.C., November 9, 2023—Iranian authorities must immediately release journalist Manijeh Moazen and cease jailing members of the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. On November 8, Moazen, a freelance journalist and translator, was arrested from her home in Iran’s capital, Tehran, and was taken to an undisclosed location, according to news reports and a…
Iranian journalist Negar Ostad Agha detained reporting on girl’s funeral
Washington, D.C., November 6, 2023—Iranian authorities must immediately release female journalist Negar Ostad Agha and cease jailing members of the press for reporting the news, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday. On October 29, Ostad Agha, a journalist and senior editor at Etemad Online, was arrested in a cemetery in Iran’s capital, Tehran, while…
Iranian journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi sentenced
Washington, D.C., October 22, 2023—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the decision to sentence journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi to 13 and 12 years in jail respectively, and reiterates its call for their immediate release. Hamedi, a reporter with the state-run Shargh Daily, and Mohammadi, head of the social issues desk at the state-run…
Tipping the scales: Journalists’ lawyers face retaliation around the globe
The smears began the day Christian Ulate began representing jailed Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora: tweets accusing the lawyer of being a leftist or questioning his legal credentials. He began to fear he was being surveilled. Ulate had taken over the case in August 2022 from two other lawyers, Romeo Montoya García and Mario Castañeda,…
‘Breathtakingly hard’: Iranian journalist Saeede Fathi on 2 months in Evin Prison
Saeede Fathabadi, who goes professionally by Saeede Fathi, was living in Vienna last year when she took a reporting trip to her native Iran to gather footage for a documentary about female athletes in the country. The topic is close to her heart; she used to be a professional basketball player but quit after she was unable…
Iran’s journalists in dire straits one year after protest crackdown
When Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, died in custody last September after morality police detained her for alleged “improper” wearing of her headscarf, Iran’s already embattled press corps paid a heavy price for reporting on her death and the nationwide protests that followed. Scores of journalists were among those arrested as Iranian authorities cracked…
Iran blocks Entekhab’s website and social media over report criticizing foreign policy
Washington, D.C., September 5, 2023—Iranian authorities must reverse their decision to shut down the moderate Tehran-based state-run news website Entekhab and allow media outlets to report the news freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday. On Monday, September 4, the Press Supervisory Board of Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance revoked Entekhab’s operating…
Iranian documentary filmmaker Mojgan Ilanlou detained in Evin Prison
Washington, D.C., August 21, 2023—Iranian authorities must immediately release documentary filmmaker Mojgan Ilanlou and cease jailing members of the press for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday. On Sunday, August 20, Illanlou responded to a summons from Tehran’s intelligence police. When she arrived at the police headquarters, authorities arrested her and transferred…