The well-known rapper Toomaj Salehi was sentenced to death by a revolutionary court of Iranwith the reason of charges related to the 2022 and 2023 riots in the Islamic Republic, according to what his lawyer reported to the local newspaper Sharq this Wednesday.
Salehi supported months of Iran protests in 2022 sparked by death in police custody of Mahsa Aminia 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman detained for allegedly wearing an “inappropriate” hijab.
From the Islamic Revolution Since 1979, the law in force in Iran requires women, Iranian or foreign – and regardless of their religion – to go out with a headscarf. However, in the last 20 years more and more women in Tehran and other large cities leave a significant part of their hair visible despite the veil.
The rapper was initially stopped in October 2022 after making public statements in support of the nationwide protests, which led to a sentence in 2023 to six years and three months in prison. However, He avoided a possible death penalty thanks to a Supreme Court ruling.
But, incredibly, his lawyer Amir Raisian announced that Finally the rapper was sentenced to death: “The First Chamber of the Revolutionary Court of (the central city of) Isfahan, in a unprecedented decisiondid not apply the ruling of the Supreme Court (…) and sentenced Salehi to the harshest sentence“.
So far, the Iranian justice system has not confirmed the sentence and Salehi has 20 days to appeal the decision. Furthermore, his lawyer assured: ”We will appeal this verdict.”
The death of Mahsa Amini that sparked massive protests
Mahsa Amini She was a 22-year-old girl who died in September 2022, after being in a coma after being detained in Tehran by the morality police in Iran.
Amini was visiting the capital of Iran with her family when she was detained on Tuesday by that special police unit, in charge of enforcing the strict clothing rules imposed on Iranian women.
Tehran police had explained in a statement that Amini had been detained along with other women to receive “explanations and instructions” about the dress code. “Suddenly, suffered a heart problem. “She was immediately taken to the hospital,” the statement said.
“Unfortunately, he died and his body has been transferred to the medico-legal institute,” they said on state television. The police confirmed the death in a statement, highlighting that there was “no” physical contact between the officers and the woman.
However, according to the Iranian branch of the NGO International Amnestythe young woman “was arbitrarily arrested by the so-called morality police” and there were allegations of torture during detention.
Television showed excerpts from a video showing a room, visibly in a police station, where numerous women appear. One of them, introduced as Mahsa Amini, gets up to argue with a “governess” and then collapses.
Amini’s death sparked strong protests that for months called for an end to the Islamic Republic, with a repression that caused 500 deaths and the arrest of at least 22,000 people and in which eight protesters were executed, one of them publicly.
Many women stopped wearing the veil after the protests as a gesture of civil disobedience and now the authorities have taken the so-called Moral Police back to the streets to reimpose the use of the Islamic garment.
Source: Ambito
