Iranian actress arrested for voicing protest support
TEHRAN: Iran arrested a prominent actress Saturday after she voiced support for the three-month-old protest movement triggered by the death of a woman in custody, the judiciary said Saturday.
Taraneh Alidoosti, 38, was arrested “by order of the judicial authority” as she “did not provide documentation for some of her claims” about the protests, reported the judiciary’s Mizan Online news website.
It added “some figures and a number of celebrities” including Alidoosti have been questioned or arrested “following some baseless comments about the recent events and the publishing of provocative material in support of the street riots”.
Alidoosti is best known for her role in the Oscar-winning 2016 film The Salesman.
Her most recent social media post was on Dec 8, the same day Mohsen Shekari, 23, became the first person executed by authorities over the protests.
“Your silence means the support of the oppression and the oppressor”, read text on an image shared to her Instagram account.
“Every international organisation who is watching this bloodshed and not taking action, is a disgrace to humanity,” Alidoosti wrote in the caption of her post.
The actor has been a prominent presence in Iranian cinema since she was a teenager.
Recently, she starred in the film Leila’s Brothers, which screened at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The Islamic republic has been rocked by protests triggered by the Sept 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country’s dress code.
On the day of Amini’s death, Alidoosti posted a photo to Instagram with text saying: “Damnation to this captivity”.
The caption to the post read: “Don’t forget what Iran’s women go through” and asked people to “say her name, spread the word”.
On Nov 9, she posted an image of herself without a headscarf, holding a paper with the words “Woman, life, freedom”, the main slogan of the protests.
Hot on the heels of Shekari’s execution, Iran publicly hanged protester Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, on Dec 12.
Nine other people arrested in connection with the unrest have been sentenced to death.
Thousands of people have been detained since the protests erupted and 400 have received jail sentences of up to 10 years for their involvement in the unrest, Iran’s judiciary said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, an inmate died in an Iranian prison on Saturday, state media reported, as concern mounts about the safety of prisoners arrested during antiregime protests.
A “limited scuffle” in Iran’s Central Prison of Karaj left one prisoner dead after he was pelted with stones by other prisoners, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported, citing Hossein Fazeli, the public prosecutor of Alborz province.
The clash erupted in a wing for drug offenders, where prisoners also set fire to a number of blankets in the prison yard, Mr Fazeli said, without elaborating on what set the conflict in motion. The prison is on the outskirts of the city of Karaj, some 40 kilometers west of the capital, Tehran.
The violence follows a fire that killed eight inmates in October in Tehran’s Evin prison, where numerous political activists and journalists are jailed. The incidents have fuelled fears for the lives of Iranian prisoners, including thousands arrested in nationwide protests that followed the death in custody of Amini.
The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights said Saturday’s incident started after a man was taken to solitary confinement to be executed.