*** ----> Iran’s top court overturns rapper Salehi’s death sentence: lawyer | THE DAILY TRIBUNE | KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN

Iran’s top court overturns rapper Salehi’s death sentence: lawyer

AFP | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia  

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Iran’s supreme court has overturned a death sentence against popular rapper Toomaj Salehi who was jailed for backing nationwide protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death, his lawyer said yesterday.

“Salehi’s death sentence was overturned,” the rapper’s lawyer Amir Raisian said in a post on X, adding that the Islamic republic’s top court had ordered a retrial.

In April, an Iranian sentenced Salehi to death on the capital offence of “corruption on earth”, Raisian said at the time.

The rapper was also found guilty of “assistance in sedition, assembly and collusion, propaganda against the state and calling for riots”, the lawyer said.

Salehi, 33, was arrested in October 2022 after publicly backing demonstrations which had erupted a month earlier, triggered by Amini’s death in police custody.

Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, had been detained by the morality police in Tehran over an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress rules for women.