Freelance journalist Vida Rabbani was arrested in January 2026 after signing a statement, alongside other Iranian journalists and activists, expressing their support for the mass protests in Iran, according to news reports.
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.
Iranian officials have not publicly commented on the arrests or disclosed the legal basis for the detentions, according to the Iraqi-Kurdish human rights organization Hengaw, and their whereabouts remain unknown.
Rabbani, who previously reported for reformist newspapers Seda Weekly, Shargh Daily, and on social media site X, 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 her declining health, Shargh Daily reported. A source close to Rabbani told CPJ she suffers from asthma and neurological problems. She also experiences 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 released from Evin Prison, under a conditional release order, after serving 32 months in prison, on April 9, 2025.
She 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.