Zeynab Rahimi, an environmental journalist, was fined on March 4, 2024, for a tweet about the death of Armita Geravand. This marks the third sentence issued in less than two weeks against Iranian journalists regarding this incident.
The ruling against Zeynab Rahimi is the third conviction of Iranian journalists for writing about the incident surrounding the death of Armita Ghavand, issued by the judiciary of the Islamic Republic in the past two weeks.
On February 24, 2024, the Tehran Court of Appeals sentenced Sara Massoumi to six months in prison and a two-year ban from journalism, which was suspended for two years. On March 4, 2024, Branch 1058 of the Tehran Criminal Court for Government Employees also sentenced Maryam Shokrani to six million tomans in fines on similar charges.
Armita Geravand, a student living in Tehran, fell into a coma following an incident on the Tehran subway on October 1, 2023, and the Islamic Republic’s media reported her “death” 28 days later. While officials and media of the Islamic Republic claimed that Armita Geravand’s death was caused by “hitting her head on the subway platform due to a drop in blood pressure,” several media outlets including The Guardian, Radio Farda, and IranWire cited eyewitnesses who claimed that the collision was the result of a physical altercation between a “hijab enforcer” and the child due to her failure to comply with mandatory hijab rules.