A dissident rapper has been sentenced to death in Iran after releasing music in support of the anti-government protests that shook the country in 2022, according to his lawyer, in a case that has sparked global condemnation.
Rapper Toomaj Salehi, 33, was one of the most prominent voices among those arrested during nationwide protests against Iran’s clerical rulers after the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Human rights organizations have been calling for Mr. Salehi’s release, saying he has been tortured in prison and warning that he could face execution.
Amir Raesian, Salehi’s lawyer, told Iran’s reformist newspaper Shargh in an article published Wednesday that a court in the central city of Isfahan had sentenced Salehi to death and that his client planned to appeal.
The office of the US special envoy for Iran condemned the sentence, calling it another example of the regime’s “brutal abuse of its own citizens, disregard for human rights and fear of the democratic change that the Iranian people seek.”
Salehi was initially arrested in October 2022 for releasing music that criticized the government and supported protests sparked by Amini’s death in the custody of Iran’s morality police. He also posted videos on his Instagram account encouraging his followers to protest.
Iranian authorities charged him in November with “spreading corruption on Earth,” a crime that can carry the death penalty. UN experts said the judicial process was held behind closed doors without the presence of Salehi’s lawyer and expressed alarm at reports that the artist had been tortured, citing reports of his broken nose and several broken fingers.
In April 2023, human rights groups again said that Salehi, who was systematically denied access to legal representation, had been tortured in prison and needed urgent medical assistance.
Three months later, an Isfahan court sentenced Mr. Salehi to more than six years in prison after a closed-door trial. He was also banned from producing music or singing for two years, according to a State Department document. Iran’s Supreme Court found problems with that ruling, and Salehi was released from prison in November 2023, only to be arrested again less than two weeks later and eventually charged with “propaganda against the state,” according to UN experts.
The Isfahan court’s decision to effectively ignore the Supreme Court and hand down a death sentence “is unprecedented,” Mr. Salehi’s lawyer told Shargh.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran, an independent advocacy group based in New York, said the death sentence was “a new low in Iran’s crackdown on dissent.”
“Toomaj’s imprisonment is due to his outspoken advocacy against state oppression,” he said in a statement. “It is imperative that supporters of free speech and dissent come together to demand his immediate release.”
The State Department, which described Mr. Salehi as a “political prisoner,” called reports that a death sentence had been handed down “disturbing.”
“We’re talking about someone who has already faced torture and other harsh treatment while in detention,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said at a news conference Wednesday.
Salehi was well known in Iran long before his imprisonment, rapping in Persian about injustice and inequality. In lyrics that resonated deeply with Iranian youth, he wrote about poverty, child labor and executions, while denouncing the country’s clerics for corruption, state mismanagement and repression.
“The upper classes have enough say,” he once said in an Instagram video. “I think rap is the voice of suffocated throats.”
He had his first big hit with “Rathole” in 2021, rapping about the regime’s apologists in Iran and abroad. The lyrics upset Iran’s leaders: Salehi was arrested in September 2021. He was released on bail after fanatics and human rights organizations campaigned for his freedom.
The episode did not deter Mr. Salehi from pursuing his art: “Will the pen that does not write break?. “This is what this town has suffered,” he said. he wrote on social media that month.
When anti-government protests broke out in Iran in September 2022, Salehi filmed himself with protesters and again used his lyrics to target the country’s clerical leaders.
“We are the voice of the anger of the people whose voice was silenced,” he rapped on “Battlefield,” which premiered during the height of the protests.
“We came to the streets like ghosts and became a nightmare for the government,” the lyrics continue, in a music video interspersed with protest images. “We see the light after this hell. Neither repression, nor the law, nor execution can stop us.”
Iranian security forces eventually killed hundreds of protesters and arrested tens of thousands in a wide-ranging crackdown. Since then, Iranian authorities have carried out a series of executions following perfunctory trials on charges related to the protests.
In a video caption posted to Instagram on October 28, two days before his initial arrest in 2022, Salehi said: “This is a revolution.”
“Every step we take is necessary to reach our goal,” he wrote. “Join us!”