The two journalists who initially reported Mahsa Amini’s death in Iran at the age of 21 have been blamed for being CIA agents. Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi broke the news of Mahsa Amini’s death first. She passed away while being held by Iran’s morality police after being arrested for improper hijab wear.
Iran’s ministry of intelligence and the intelligence organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards on Saturday said that both journalists are currently lodged in Iran’s Evin prison.
The CIA, Mossad, and other western intelligence organisations were accused of orchestrating the widespread demonstrations in Iran that followed Mahsa Amini’s passing and of using the female journalists as “main sources of news for foreign media.”
The statement said that Niloofar Hamedi, who pretended to be a journalist and coerced Mahsa Amini’s family to release information about their daughter’s death.
Niloofar Hamedi’s first publication of Mahsa Amini’s images set off protests in Tehran that later expanded to other nations, during which security forces killed at least 234 protestors, including 29 children.
The two intelligence agencies also charged the US with spending billions of dollars to track down individuals in Iran and link them to “Western networks under the guise of human rights initiatives and democracy promotion.”