The Iranian government has accused two female journalists of being CIA foreign agents for their role in covering the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman whose passing while in the care of Iran’s morality police sparked widespread protests.
According to reports, Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, who were detained shortly after word of Amini’s passing spread and who are reportedly being held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, were charged with being foreign agents in a joint statement issued by Iran’s intelligence ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence agency last night.
The statement, which refers to the two women as NH and EM, also claimed that the CIA, Mossad, and other western intelligence agencies had planned the protests ahead of time.
In the statement, Hamedi was charged with impersonating a journalist and pressuring the family of Mahsa Amini to disclose information about their daughter’s death. The statement also charged both women with serving as “primary sources of news for foreign media.”
Amini collapsed while in the custody of Iranian authorities after being detained for incorrectly donning her hijab, and Hamedi was the first journalist to report from the hospital where she was being treated.
The IRGC and the intelligence ministry have accused Mohammadi of receiving training as a foreign agent abroad because she covered Amini’s funeral in her hometown of Saqqez.
When Mohammadi was taken into custody on September 22, her attorney claimed that security personnel had broken down her door and taken away her laptop and phone.
Other Iranian journalists have responded to the statement, which was sent to Iranian news agencies on Friday evening, with shock and fear. In Iran, espionage for foreign governments is punishable by death.
Since the protests started to spread across the nation’s streets, more than 40 journalists have been arrested. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) in Iran, since protests started more than six weeks ago, security forces have killed more than 220 people.
“They are closely watching us, and I have been told to break off all contact with foreign reporters. My cellphone has had international calls, so it’s a big risk if they check my phone records and discover that someone from the west was calling, even if it was a friend.
Aferin, another journalist who works for an Iranian news outlet, claimed that the efforts to label the two journalists as spies were a part of a concerted attack on the Iranian media. The regime was trying to prevent news of what was happening on the ground from reaching a global audience, he claimed, so he was trying to label the journalists as spies.
“Now they’ll waste no time punishing the journalists. They know that there are people inside Iran, like myself, who are in touch with friends or media abroad. They’ll use this statement and conclusion to make more arrests, or worse, execute their own citizens for espionage,” he said.
