CNN
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Dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi has been given a demise sentence for his involvement within the widespread protests that swept Iran in 2022, based on his lawyer.
“An order for the execution of Toomaj Salehi has been issued,” Salehi’s lawyer Amir Raesian tweeted Wednesday.
The rapper has been detained, held in solitary confinement and was allegedly tortured following his arrest.
In an unprecedented transfer, a courtroom in Isfahan reversed the upper Supreme Court docket’s choice on Saleh’s case on Tuesday, upholding the unique verdict of “corruption on earth” and issued the utmost punishment of demise, based on Iranian pro-reform shops Shargh and Entekhab.
State media stated Salehi’s sentence is topic for discount by a pardoning committee if he appeals once more.
Salehi, 32, who has been crucial of the Iranian regime and outspoken towards the federal government in rap lyrics and on social media, was briefly launched from jail final yr earlier than police violently rearrested him and despatched him to jail in Isfahan, witnesses stated on the time.
He was rearrested after showing in a video the place he revealed that he was tortured and positioned in solitary confinement for 252 days following his arrest in October 2022, UN consultants stated in a press release printed by the Workplace of the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
One other artist, Kurdish-Iranian rapper Saman Yasin, who was additionally arrested on the peak of 2022’s protests in Iran, was transferred to a psychiatric hospital two occasions in lower than a yr, based on pro-reform information outlet IranWire.
A courtroom in Tehran sentenced Yasin to 5 years in jail, based on group centered on Kurdish human rights, Hengaw.
Demonstrations swept the nation after the demise of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, which occurred below suspicious circumstances whereas in police custody. A brutal crackdown on the protests by Iranian authorities focused the weeks-long protests.
“We strongly condemn Toomaj Salehi’s demise sentence and the five-year sentence for Kurdish-Iranian rapper Saman Yasin. We name for his or her fast launch,” america’ Workplace of the Particular Envoy for Iran tweeted. “These are the most recent examples of the regime’s brutal abuse of its personal residents, disregard for human rights, and concern of the democratic change the Iranian folks search.”
UN consultants additionally demanded Salehi’s launch and urged Iranian authorities to reverse the demise sentence.
“We’re alarmed by the imposition of the demise sentence and the alleged ill-treatment of Mr. Salehi which seems to be associated solely to the train of his proper to freedom of creative expression and creativity,” the consultants stated.
Salehi’s political sponsor in Europe, German Member of Parliament Ye-One Rhie, known as the demise sentence towards Salehi “absurd and inhumane.”
“It’s nonetheless fully unclear how this verdict took place,” she tweeted Wednesday. “It’s unbelievable how irresponsibly and arbitrarily the Iranian regime treats defendants. It’s not possible to acknowledge the rule of legislation within the chaos of the courts in cost.”
