Iranian photojournalist faces 15 years in prison over images, reporting

Acclaimed Iranian photojournalist Yalda Moaiery, who has spent much of her career documenting dissent and the lives of women in Iran, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, according to a statement she provided to Reuters.

The sentence was handed down under a law enacted after a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in 2025. Iranian authorities say the legislation is intended to combat espionage and cooperation with hostile states.

Moaiery learned of the sentence on Saturday, Iran’s National Journalist Day.

When she arrived at Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, she said she was not given formal case documents. Instead, a friend accompanying her copied details from a charge sheet by hand. Rights groups say such procedures reflect a lack of transparency in Iran’s judicial system.

According to the handwritten notes reviewed by Reuters, the accusations include giving interviews to media outlets deemed hostile by the authorities and providing photographs to organisations linked to the United States and Israel. Reuters could not independently verify the contents of the charge sheet.

Moaiery said the intelligence wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps raided her home during anti-government protests in January and confiscated her phone, laptop and other electronic equipment. She said IRGC officers returned after the United States launched air strikes on Iran this year and again seized her belongings.

“On this occasion, they took everything, including even the cameras I had owned since childhood,” she said.

“I was subjected to several interrogations, and eventually my case was referred to Branch 33 of the Security Prosecutor’s Office and subsequently to the Revolutionary Court.”

The spokesman for Iran’s UN mission in New York did not respond to a request for comment.

Roya Boroumand, executive director of the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, said withholding case documents was an effort by the authorities to “silence” defendants and showed the judiciary was acting as a state agent.

Career documenting women and dissent

Moaiery’s work has largely focused on women and social unrest in Iran. She photographed some of the earliest documented detentions of women by morality police, including a 2007 image showing two women sitting in white police vans with tears streaming down their faces.

In 2017, she photographed a student protesting economic conditions at Tehran University. The image showed the woman walking through tear gas with her fist raised and was later used by the Trump administration in its comments on human rights in Iran.

Moaiery also covered the nationwide “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests that erupted in 2022 following the death of young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in police custody.

She spent three months in jail that year and was sentenced to eight years in prison over her coverage. An amnesty later reduced the sentence, but she said the case continued to expose her to questioning by authorities.

She has previously served two years in Gharchak Prison, a facility she had earlier photographed.

At the centre of her latest case are photographs she took during US-Israeli air strikes on Iran in 2026. Moaiery said she shared images showing damage from the strikes with CNN and appeared in an interview about her reporting in March.

The handwritten document provided to Reuters lists accusations including “interviewing with networks hostile to the system” and sending photographs to entities in the United States and Israel that it describes as “hostile”.

Moaiery has 10 days to appeal the sentence under the 2025 espionage law, half the period allowed under previous legislation.

Reporters Without Borders says 16 journalists have been detained in Iran this year.

Despite the latest sentence, Moaiery said she remained committed to documenting Iranian society.

“None of these sentences, however, has ever caused me to abandon my path, even for a moment. I have continued to document and show the realities of Iranian society,” she said.

“I don’t have anything to lose. The regime took everything from me and the only thing that I still have is my truth and honesty as an observer.”