Iran sentences rapper to death for supporting protests

Iran's Revolutionary Court has sentenced well-known Iranian rapper
Thomaj Salehi to death for charges related to unrest in Iran in 2022, his lawyer told the Iranian newspaper "Shark" yesterday.

Salehi supported his songs in the 2022 protests in Iran sparked by the death in police custody of Mehsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who was arrested for allegedly wearing an "improper" hijab.

Salehi was first arrested in October 2022 after making public statements in support of protests across Iran. He was sentenced in 2023 to 6 years and 3 months in prison, he avoided the death sentence due to the ruling of the Supreme Court.

"The Revolutionary Court of Isfahan, in an unprecedented step, did not enforce the ruling of the Supreme Court. And sentenced Salehi to the most severe punishment," said Salehi's lawyer.

The American office of the special envoy to Iran was shocked by the sentence, calling it in a statement an example of "the Iranian regime's brutal abuse of its citizens, disregard for human rights, which happens because of fear of the democratic change that the Iranian people are looking for."