Iran: Journalist who interviewed Mahsha Amini’s father arrested

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Journalist Nazila Maroufian was arrested inside her relatives’ house and taken to Evin prison in the Iranian capital.

Iranian security forces have arrested a journalist who had interviewed the father of Mahsha Amini, whose death in September sparked protests and a major movement to challenge the regime, a non-governmental organization said today.

According to the Norway-based human rights group Hengaw, Nazila Maroufian, a Tehran-based journalist who, like Mahsha Amini, hails from Sayez in Iran’s Kurdistan province, was arrested on Sunday.

The journalist was arrested inside her relatives’ home and taken to Evin prison in the Iranian capital, the non-governmental organization said, citing a phone call with her family.

The journalist, who works for the Ruydad 24 news website, had published an interview with Amzad, Mahsa Amini’s father, on October 19 via the Mostaghel website.

“I’m not suicidal and I don’t have any underlying illness,” she commented, posting a link to her article, in a direct allusion to the risks she knew she was taking by publishing the interview.

The Mostaghel website has since taken down the text, but a hidden version of it testifies to the fact that the father denies the explanations of the Iranian authorities, according to which his daughter suffered from health problems. The title of the article is categorical: “Machsa Amini’s father: ‘they are lying'”.

Iran has been rocked for nearly two months by protests sparked by the death of the young woman on September 16. She had been arrested by the morality police for violating the Islamic Republic’s very strict dress code for women.

Read more: Iran: Security forces beat a student to death inside a school

The protests, which Iranian authorities have described as riots, are unprecedented in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in terms of their scale and nature.

The two journalists who contributed to publicizing the case are being held in Evin prisons.

Sarg newspaper’s Niloufar Hamedi, 30, had gone to the hospital where Mahsa Amini was in a coma before she succumbed. She was arrested on September 20, according to her family.

Elahe Mohammadi, 35, a journalist for the Ham Mihan newspaper, had traveled from her side to cover the young woman’s funeral in Sagez, where one of the first demonstrations of this major protest movement also took place. The journalist was arrested on September 29.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 54 journalists were arrested during the crackdown on the protests. Only around 10 of them have since been released on bail.

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