Iranian photojournalist Yalda Moaiery has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. For more than two decades, her camera has documented protests, wars, repression and, above all, the resistance of Iranian women. Now the images she refused to stop making have become evidence against her
Yalda Moaiery is one of Iran’s most prominent photojournalists. For more than twenty years, she has photographed conflict, political unrest, natural disasters and social change in Iran and across the region. Her work has appeared in major international publications, including Time, Newsweek, Le Monde, Le Figaro and El País. She is also a member of the Iranian Photojournalists Association.
In August 2026, Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Moaiery to 15 years in prison. According to Reuters, the case concerns photographs and interviews provided to foreign media, including CNN, and other organizations that Iranian authorities regard as hostile. The accusations have been framed under legislation introduced following the 2025 conflict between Iran and Israel and concern alleged cooperation with hostile states.
The sentence is the latest chapter in a much longer history of persecution.
Moaiery has spent much of her professional life photographing events that the Iranian authorities would prefer not to be seen.
Her assignments have taken her from Iran to Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, Georgia and Indonesia. But some of her most significant photographs have been made at home: demonstrations, women challenging restrictions imposed upon them, and moments of repression in the streets of Iran. The International Women’s Media Foundation has documented her career and the persecution she has faced.
The 15-year sentence was handed down in absentia by Branch 29 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. The punishment goes far beyond imprisonment: the court also ordered the confiscation of Moaiery’s camera and other electronic devices and imposed a permanent ban on political and media activities, as well as further restrictions on her professional and economic life. Front Line Defenders has documented the sentence and the additional restrictions imposed on her.
Moaiery is currently still free in Tehran while awaiting the outcome of her appeal. In an interview with The Times, she makes clear that what weighs most heavily on her is not simply the prospect of fifteen years in prison, but the years in which she may no longer be able to photograph. Photography, for Moaiery, is not simply a profession: it is the way she has chosen to document the contemporary history of her country.
The sentence therefore attempts to take away not only her freedom, but also her camera, her work and her ability to bear witness.
In September 2022, following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, Moaiery went into the streets of Tehran to photograph the protests that would become the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.
She was arrested while working.
According to the International Women’s Media Foundation, security forces detained her while she was covering demonstrations in downtown Tehran. She was injured during her arrest and transferred to Qarchak prison. She was eventually released on bail in December 2022.
She was subsequently sentenced to six years in prison on charges including “spreading propaganda against the system” and “acting against national security.” Her case was also cited in a 2023 United States Senate resolution concerning the persecution of women in Iran.
Her punishment also included something deliberately humiliating: she was ordered to perform two months of street-cleaning work. Moaiery responded publicly that she had no problem with the dignity of that work. What she objected to was being prevented from doing the profession she had practised for more than two decades: photographing the reality of her own country. Euronews reported on the sentence and her response.
Moaiery did not stop.
During the violent repression of demonstrations in Iran in January 2026, she continued photographing.
She documented the major demonstration in Tehran on January 8 and later photographed the funeral of Mohammad Mozafari, a 39-year-old man killed during the repression. Because of the internet shutdown, she struggled for days to transmit the images outside Iran. Eventually, using a VPN, she managed to send around forty photographs.
Le Monde published Moaiery’s account and a selection of these rare images from Tehran.
Those pictures became some of the rare professional visual records of what had happened in the streets while the country was largely cut off from the outside world.
This is precisely why photojournalism matters under authoritarian systems.
A photograph can cross a border when a journalist cannot.
It can survive an internet blackout.
It can preserve the face of someone whom power would prefer to erase.
And it can become evidence.
In the months that followed, pressure on Moaiery intensified.
In June 2026, she reported that her mobile phone line had been blocked for months and that the intelligence branch of the Revolutionary Guards had prepared a case against her. Defenders of Free Flow of Information documented the restrictions and the case against her.
Then came the new sentence.
Fifteen years in prison.
The accusation transforms the ordinary acts of journalism—taking photographs, giving interviews, communicating with international media—into threats to national security.
Moaiery has said she intends to appeal. Reuters reports that she has also faced restrictions in accessing documents relating to her own case.
The sentence therefore cannot be understood simply as the punishment of one photographer.
It is also a warning to anyone who records.
Do not photograph.
Do not transmit.
Do not show the world what is happening here.
For more than two decades, Yalda Moaiery has chosen to remain close to the events she photographs.
Her images are not merely illustrations accompanying news reports. Together they form a visual archive of contemporary Iran: protests, repression, women’s resistance, funerals, violence, courage and everyday life.
The authorities can confiscate cameras.
They can block telephone lines.
They can prohibit a photographer from working.
They can impose prison sentences.
But the photographs already exist.
They have crossed the border.
They have been published.
They have become memory.
Fifteen years in prison for taking photographs is not only a sentence against Yalda Moaiery. It is a sentence against the act of witnessing.
Yalda Moaiery must be free.
And she must be free to photograph.
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