Iran overturns death sentence of rapper famous for protest songs

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence of a government critic and popular hip-hop artist, Toomaj Salehi, who rose to fame for his lyrics about the 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, his court said on Saturday. lawyer Amir Raisian.

In a post on the social media platform He added that another courtroom will now review the case.

Salehi’s death sentence in April by a Revolutionary Court in the central city of Isfahan created confusion as not even the Iranian state news agency IRNA and the judiciary formally confirmed it. These courts in Iran often involve closed-door hearings with evidence presented by the clerk and grant limited rights to the defendants.

The news quickly attracted international criticism from the United States and United Nations experts, who condemned it as a sign of Tehran’s continued crackdown on all dissent after years of mass protests.

Salehi was released from prison last November after spending a year there on charges his supporters said were based on hip-hop artist music and participation in the protests that broke out in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Amini died in the custody of the country’s moral police after being detained for wearing her hijab too vaguely.

Salehi rapped about Amini in a video and said: “Someone’s crime was dancing with their hair blowing in the wind.” In another verse, he predicts the fall of the Iranian theocracy.

Shortly after his release last year, Salehi was sent to prison again after saying in a video message that he was tortured after his arrest in October 2022. State media at the time published a video showing him blindfolded and apologizing for his words, a statement that was likely made under duress . Later, in 2023, a court sentenced Salehi to more than six years in prison.

United Nations investigators say Iran was responsible for Amini’s death and that it violently suppressed largely peaceful protests in a months-long security crackdown that killed more than 500 people and detained more than 22,000.