An Iranian court sentenced a dissident rapper to death, local media reported on Wednesday. The rapper has been imprisoned for more than a year and a half for supporting the protests unleashed by 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.
“Section 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court… sentenced Toomaj Salehi to death on charges of corruption on Earth,” said the artist’s lawyer, Amir Raisian, according to the reformist newspaper Shargh.
Salehi, 33, was arrested in October 2022 after publicly supporting the wave of demonstrations which erupted a month earlier, sparked by the death in custody of Amini, 22, an Iranian Kurdish woman who had been detained for an alleged violation of the Islamic republic’s strict dress standards for women. Months of uncertainty following Amini’s death in September 2022 saw hundreds of people killed including dozens of security personnel, and thousands more arrested. Iranian officials called the protests “riots” and accused Tehran’s foreign enemies of fomenting the rest.
The Revolutionary Court charged Salehi with “assisting sedition, assembly and collusion, propaganda against the system and calling for riots,” Raisian said.
The nation’s Supreme Court reviewed the case and issued a ruling to the lower court to “remove the flaws in the ruling,” Raisian said. However, the court “in an unprecedented move, highlighted its independence and did not apply the Supreme Court ruling,” according to Raisian.
Raisian said he and Salehi “will certainly appeal the sentence.”
“The fact is that the court’s verdict has clear legal contradictions,” the lawyer said. “The contradiction with the Supreme Court ruling is considered the most important and at the same time the strangest part of this ruling.”
Nine men have been executed in cases related to protests that involved killings and other violence against security forces.