Iranian flag. (Credit: AFP)
Iranian authorities on Wednesday released the activist and journalist Sepideh Gholian after over four years in prison, she announced on her social media accounts.
Gholian, 28, one of the most prominent women held in Iran and seen as a political prisoner by activists, was first detained in 2018 after reporting on a labor protest in the west of Iran.
She was then briefly released on bail but arrested in January 2019 to serve a five-year sentence on national security charges.
In prison she has, through letters and messages to supporters, become a strong voice against the abuses that she says women are subjected to in Iranian jails.
"Now I am free, hoping for the freedom of Iran!" Gholian wrote on her Twitter and Instagram accounts, posting a video of herself walking out of Evin jail in Tehran, clutching a bouquet of flowers.
She expressed hope for the release of other women seen as political prisoners by activists, including the environmental campaigner Niloufar Bayani, the women's rights campaigner Bahareh Hedayat and German-Iranian dual national Nahid Taghavi.
The video showed Gholian leaving jail in traditional dress and defiantly shouting a slogan against Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
She was also not wearing a headscarf, in defiance of the Islamic Republic's strict dress code for women.
In a lacerating letter published by BBC Persian in January, Gholian described the methods used by interrogators to force confessions and the screams heard within the prison.
"Today the sounds we hear... across Iran are louder than the sounds in interrogation rooms; this is the sound of a revolution, the true sound of 'Woman, life, freedom'," she said, using the main slogan in women-led protests that broke out in Iran six months ago.
Many of the women held in Iran were arrested well before the protests sparked by the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurd who had been detained for allegedly violating the dress code for women.
But their numbers swelled in the ensuing crackdown.
Several women have been released in recent weeks, including French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, but campaigners have rejected an amnesty as a PR stunt and key figures remain detained.
Gholian, 28, one of the most prominent women held in Iran and seen as a political prisoner by activists, was first detained in 2018 after reporting on a labor protest in the west of Iran.
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