Mehdi Yarrahi, a famous Iranian pop singer, was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison and received 74 lashes for supporting women's protest against compulsory veiling in Iran. To reveal it today on platform X (formerly Twitter) was his lawyer Zahra Minouei, according to whom the sentence was issued in the first instance by the 26th section of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran.
The 42-year-old, winner of the Fajr festival, the country's largest musical event, was arrested at the end of August following the publication of a song that contested the obligation to wear the headscarf in force in Iran. Detained for two months in Evin prison in Tehran, where the ayatollah regime often imprisons political opponents, he was released on bail in October.
The month before, the judiciary had accused the artist, committed to supporting the protests of Iranian women, of “disturbing public order” and of “creating and disseminating content contrary to public morality”. “My client, Mehdi Yarrahi, was sentenced to a total of two years and eight months in prison and 74 lashes,” his lawyer Zahra Minouei wrote about him today in X. “According to article 134 of the Islamic Penal Code he will have to serve one year in prison.”
Ahead of the first anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, a young girl of Kurdish origin who died in September 2022 after being arrested for not wearing her headscarf correctly, Yarrahi had released a three-minute song (and a music video) entitled “Roosarito” (literally “Your veil” in Farsi).
The singer dedicated the song to the “courageous Iranian women” who participated in the protest movement against the regime shouting: “Woman, life, freedom”. Another song by him “Sorode Zan” (literally “The song of women” in Farsi), published a year ago now, had become a real anthem for the demonstrators, especially in the universities. However, his voice too has been silenced, at least for now.
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