Iranian rapper receives death sentence, later commuted to imprisonment: Report

Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, who was arrested for “provoking violence” during anti-government protests in Iran last year, received a primary death sentence, but the ruling was later commuted to imprisonment, a report says.

Tasnim news agency said in a report on Wednesday that, “based on the news received,” Salehi’s sentence had been commuted because of his “active cooperation” with authorities.

The report did not say where it had received the news from, or how long Salehi’s prison sentence was.

Protests erupted in Iran after the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of “morality police” for not wearing her hijab properly in September last year. Several months of protests gradually subsided.

A number of people have received death sentences on charges of killing security forces.

Tasnim said Salehi was arrested while attempting to flee the country at a border site.
It said he had encouraged “violence, confronting armed forces, and making Molotov cocktails” on his Twitter account and had “published fake news.”

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