Iranian TV channel airs interview with jailed ‘zombie’ Instagram star

TEHRAN: Iranian state television has aired an interview with an Instagrammer famous for drastically altering her appearance through plastic surgery to look like a zombie and arrested for alleged “blasphemy”.

Sahar Tabar was arrested on the orders of Tehran’s Islamic guidance court on October 5 after “requests from the public” for her to be detained, the broadcaster said. She faces charges including blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging corruption.

“I do not look like these photoshopped pictures right now,” the 22-year-old told state television in the interview aired on Tuesday.

“This is close to what I look like these days,” Tabar said, holding a phone with a portrait of herself.

Tabar denied reports she sought to look like Angelina Jolie, saying she was inspired by a zombie-like character from the animated film Corpse Bride.

Her Instagram account, which she said had 486,000 followers, no longer appears to be active.

MADRID: Spain has exhumed the remains of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco from his grandiose mausoleum outside Madrid so he can be reburied in a small family crypt north of the capital.

The government-ordered, closed-door operation on Thursday satisfies a decades-old desire of many in Spain who considered the vainglorious mausoleum that

Franco built an affront to the tens of thousands who died in Spain’s Civil War and his subsequent regime and to Spain’s standing as a modern democratic state.

After his coffin was extracted from under marble slabs and two tons of granite, a brief prayer was said in line with a request from Franco’s family.

The dictator’s body was then carried out of the mausoleum, and is to be taken by helicopter or by hearse to Mingorrubio cemetery where his wife is buried - a 57km drive away.

Fearing disturbances, the government banned a demonstration against the exhumation by Franco supporters.

Ex-spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told Spanish national television that the exhumation “has great significance for our democracy. Today our democracy is more perfect”.

Franco ruled Spain between 1939 and 1975.