Iranian rapper sentenced to hanging for contesting Mahsa Amini’s death

One Iranian rapper was sentenced to death by hanging for her support of the protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, in 2022. The 22-year-old was detained for wearing a hijab considered “inappropriate”. The lawyer for Toomaj Salehi, 33, confirmed that he faces charges linked to civil unrest against the government during that period. The information was released by the Iranian newspaper Sharq this Wednesday, 24.

Salehi publicly expressed his support for demonstrations of the “Women, Life, Freedom” wavewhich resulted in his arrest in October 2021. Additionally, he released songs that criticize the Iranian regime and demand greater freedom and rights for women. Salehi shared images of his participation in some of these protests in solidarity with Mahsa Amini.

After his arrest in the same year as Mahsa’s death, Salehi was again sentenced last year to six years and three months in prison for “corruption on Earth”, but escaped the death sentence due to a Supreme Court decision, which identified “flaws in the original sentence” and sent the case back to a court of first instance to be reevaluated.

However, the first section of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court, in disagreement with the Supreme Court’s decision, imposed the Salehi the maximum penaltyas reported by the lawyer Amir Raisian to Sharq. The Court charged the rapper with “assistance in sedition, assembly and collusion, propaganda against the system and calling for riots,” it said. Raisian.

Resistance

So far, the Iranian judiciary has not confirmed the sentence. Salehi has 20 days to appeal the decision, which his lawyer assured will be done. Since then, the rapper has claimed to have been victim of torture while in custodyas reported by the newspaper O Globo, via Iran Wire.

You should know that I am not afraid of death, prison and torture. What I fear is seeing women sell their bodies out of necessity and being forced to shut up. I’m afraid to see people bow down to the waist in the trash can but remain silent; seeing you hit a worker and keep quiet; witness the murder of a protester and the torture of his family in search of justice, and shut up… There is a sea of ​​blood between you and me”, wrote the rapper on his social networks, before being arrested.