Reuters: An Iranian revolutionary court has sentenced well-known Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi to death for charges linked to Iran's 2022-23 unrest, his lawyer told Iranian newspaper Sharq on Wednesday.
Salehi in his songs supported months of protests in Iran in 2022 sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman arrested for allegedly wearing an "improper" hijab.
Salehi was initially arrested in October 2022 after making public statements in support of the nationwide protests.
He was sentenced in 2023 to six years and three months in prison, but avoided a death sentence due to a Supreme Court ruling.
"Branch One of the Revolutionary Court of (the central city of) Isfahan in an unprecedented move, did not enforce the Supreme Court's ruling .... and sentenced Salehi to the harshest punishment," his lawyer Amir Raisian told Sharq.
Iranian judiciary has not confirmed the sentence yet. Salehi has 20 days to appeal the ruling.
"We will definitely appeal this verdict," his lawyer said.
The U.S. Office of the Special Envoy for Iran deplored the sentence, calling it in a statement posted on X an example "of the regime’s brutal abuse of its own citizens, disregard for human rights, and fear of the democratic change the Iranian people seek."
In World
-
Volodymyr Zelensky has warned European leaders Donald Trump will ignore them if the continent doesn’t take better care of its own defences.
-
President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending all U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they are aligned with his policy goals.
-
President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement on Monday, once again placing the world's top historic emitter of greenhouse gases outside the global pact aimed at pushing nations to tackle climate change. Here are some reactions to the announcement of the second U.S. withdrawal from the climate pact:
-
Moldova and its separatist Transdniestria region inched towards a deal on Monday to allow gas to flow to residents of the rebel enclave, who have been suffering from power and heating cuts since the start of the year.
Leave a review