Iran court jails rapper Toomaj for six years for backing protests

Dubai — Well-known Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, who supported the protest movement that sprang up in Iran last year, has avoided a death sentence and been jailed for six years and three months, his lawyer told Monday’s edition of the daily newspaper Shargh.

Salehi had expressed support online and in his songs for a wave of nationwide protest triggered by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman arrested for wearing “inappropriate attire”.

Salehi was convicted of “corruption on earth”, which covers a broad range of offences including those related to Islamic morality and can carry the death sentence.

His lawyer Rosa Etemad Ansari was quoted as saying Salehi had been acquitted of insulting the Supreme Leader and co-operation with hostile governments and had been moved out of solitary confinement into the general section of his prison.

In November, Iranian media had published a video of Salehi in detention, in which he was blindfolded and he renounced previous comments critical of the authorities.

Reuters