An Iranian court has sentenced a dissident rapper to death, local media reported on Wednesday. The rapper was jailed for more than a year and a half for supporting protests provoked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.
“Department 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Isfahan… has sentenced Toomaj Salehi to death on charges of corruption on earth,” the artist's lawyer Amir Raisian said, according to the reformist newspaper Shargh.
Salehi, 33, was arrested in October 2022 after coming out in public support wave of demonstrations that erupted a month earlier, caused by the death in custody of 22-year-old Amini, an Iranian Kurd who had been detained for an alleged violation of the Islamic Republic's strict dress code for women. Months of unrest following Amini's death in September 2022 hundreds of people killed including dozens of security personnel, and thousands more arrested. Iranian officials labeled the protests as “riots” and accused Tehran's foreign enemies of inciting protests the anxiety.
The Revolutionary Court had charged Salehi with “aiding sedition, conspiracy and conspiracy, propaganda against the system and incitement to riots,” Raisian said.
The country's Supreme Court had reviewed the case and issued a ruling to the lower court to “remove the flaws in the verdict,” Raisian said. However, the court had “emphasized its independence in an unprecedented way and failed to implement the Supreme Court's ruling,” Raisian said.
Raisian said he and Salehi “will certainly appeal the verdict.”
“The fact is that the court's ruling contains clear legal conflicts,” the lawyer said. “The contradiction with the Supreme Court's ruling is seen as the most important and at the same time the strangest part of this ruling.”
Nine men have been executed in protest-related cases involving killings and other violence against security forces.
