Iranian photojournalist Yalda Moaiery was arrested by the country’s anti-riot police on September 19, 2022, while she was documenting street protests in Tehran following the September 16 death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, who was in morality police custody for allegedly violating Iran’s conservative dress law. No charges have been disclosed.
Moaiery was released on bail on December 20, 2022, and continues to work while awaiting her court date and potential trial.
On February 3, 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) raided Moaiery’s Tehran home and confiscated her personal electronic devices, including her cellphone, laptop, and cameras. Moaiery, a 2023 recipient of a International Women’s Media Foundation award, had been documenting the January uprising in Iran and the crackdown on protesters.
Moaiery’s photographs have been published by international magazines and newspapers such as TIME, Newsweek, Le Monde, and El Pais, according to an archived version of her biography on her website. She also took photographs for local Iranian publications.
Moaiery wrote on Instagram Stories that she was beaten and sexually assaulted when she was arrested while covering protests on Hejab street in downtown Tehran in September 2022. (CPJ reviewed the story before its automatic 24-hour expiry.) She was initially taken to Qarchak Prison, a female-only detention facility in Varamin, southeast of Tehran.
According to the exile-run news website IranWire, which obtained an audio recording of a phone call Moaiery made from prison in September 2022, the journalist said conditions there were “horrible,” with more than 100 women crammed into a tight space. “There are only three bathrooms for their use and prison authorities prescribe many tranquilizers for the prisoners,” she said.
According to the journalist’s father, Gholamreza Moaiery, who spoke to CPJ via phone, Moaiery was transferred to Evin Prison in Tehran on October 14, 2022, and was immediately placed in solitary confinement in ward 2A, under the supervision of an intelligence unit of the IRGC. Gholamreza Moaiery said he spoke to his daughter briefly and that she said she was violently interrogated, though did not provide further details.
He said the journalist had been denied legal representation and that she was physically fine but suffering emotionally.
Authorities arrested dozens of journalists in Iran as the protests over Amini’s death spread across the country. Several were later released on bail.
CPJ emailed Iran’s mission to the United Nations for comment on press freedom repression and the January 2026 protests in Iran but received no response.