Freelance journalist Vida Rabbani was arrested on January 31, 2026, after signing a statement, alongside other Iranian journalists and activists, expressing their support for the mass protests in Iran. She was released on bail on February 17.
The statement accused the government of using “inflation, poverty, insecurity, corruption, and injustice as tools of repression,” and argued the demonstrations represent “the national will to remove the illegitimate regime of the Islamic Republic.” Freelance journalist and political commentator Mehdi Mahmoudian was also arrested after signing the letter.
Rabbani went on a hunger strike after being transferred to Tonekabon Prison in Mazandaran province on February 6, in protest of her imprisonment “in a city that is not her place of residence,” her lawyer, Hassan Asadi Zeydabadi, wrote on X on February 9.
The day before she was transferred, while being held at the Sari Intelligence Detention Center, Rabbani was “severely beaten” for refusing to wear a compulsory hijab, according to Zeydabadi. “The bruises have been documented,” he wrote, adding that “a formal complaint will be filed with the competent legal authority.”
Rabbani’s husband, Hamidreza Amiri, wrote on X on February 7 that he visited her at Tonekabon and the meeting was conducted behind glass. She had “very numerous and clearly visible” bruises on her body, including on her hands.
Amiri said that when Rabbani refused to comply with wearing the hijab, prison officials pulled her hair. Describing the scene as “strange and shocking,” he said she had made “a bracelet from strands of her own hair that had been pulled out.”
On February 12, Amiri posted on X that Rabbani had ended her hunger strike following pleas by civil rights activists.
On February 17, Amiri posted on X that Rabbani “was released from Tonekabon Prison on bail” of 6.5 billion tomans (US$47,500).
Rabbani, who previously reported for reformist newspapers Seda Weekly, Shargh Daily, and on X, had been imprisoned before.
On April 9, 2025, Rabbani was released from Evin Prison, under a conditional release order, after serving 32 months.
She was arrested from her home on September 24, 2022, for reporting on protests in the wake of Mahsa Jina Amini’s death. On December 31, 2022, she was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison for “acting and colluding against national security” and “spreading propaganda against the system,” according to the state-run news website Khabaronline.
Prior to her September 2022 arrest, she had been sentenced to 10 years and four months in prison for “blasphemy,” “assembly and collusion to act against national security,” “propaganda against the regime,” and “disrupting public order” in an August 2022 case over her activities on the social audio app Clubhouse, where she helped convene a chat room about politics and social issues. She was not taken into custody at the time.
On June 11, 2023, Rabbani was placed on furlough due to declining health, Shargh Daily reported. A source close to Rabbani told CPJ she suffers from asthma and neurological issues. She also suffered from nerve inflammation in her feet and eyes, and chronic headaches. She was summoned back to prison on August 25, 2023, according to the source.
Rabbani was previously imprisoned for one month in 2020.
CPJ’s email to the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York in February 2026 requesting comment did not receive a response.