Elaheh Mohammadi

In 2026, she was awarded a Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation. Mohammadi was arrested by Iranian security forces in September 2022 for reporting on Mahsa Amini's funeral.

• Name — Elaheh Mohammadi • Born — 9 May 1987 • Occupation — Journalist • Known for — Reporting on Mahsa Amini's funeral and her subsequent arrest

Mohammadi had traveled to Saqqez for Iran's Ham-Mihan newspaper to cover the funeral of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had spent three days in a coma following her arrest by Tehran's notorious morality police and died on 16 September. Mohammadi had reported about the police attack at the funeral. Mohammadi was summoned by the judicial authorities but was then arrested by security forces on 29 September 2022, while on her way to the Ministry of Intelligence office for the questioning, according to Mohammad Ali Kamfiroozi, Mohammadi's lawyer, who broke the news on his page on social media. On 4 November 2022, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and Intelligence ministry issued a joint statement, filled with unsubstantiated claims, accusing Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi, another female journalist, of being foreign agents engaged in “multi-dimensional wars” organized by “Western and Zionist intelligence agencies… to carry out serious and uninterrupted planning with the aim of influencing different social layers, especially in areas related to women”. Her sister Elnaz Mohammadi has been sentenced to three years in prison in September 2023.

On 11 August 2024, Mohammadi's lawyers announced that the journalist had been acquitted by the Court of Appeal of the charge of "collaborating with a hostile foreign government, the United States." Regarding the remaining charges, she was legally covered by the 2021 amnesty decree. On 11 February 2025, it was reported that Mohammadi had been pardoned by Iran's top judicial authority alongside Niloofar Hamedi on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s approval. The pardons cleared remaining charges of "colluding against national security" and "propaganda against the regime," closing their cases. Both women had been temporarily released on bail in January 2024 after 17 months in prison while awaiting appeal and were later acquitted of the charge of "collaboration with the U.S." by an appeals court. She was summoned for questioning on February 25 but released after several hours.

Elaheh Mohammadi is recorded as having received World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award, UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize and Leuchtturm Prize.