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 Saturday. “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 court sentenced Salehi to death for 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 Oct 2022 after publicly backing demonstrations which had erupted a month earlier, triggered by Amini’s death in police custody.
“The Supreme Court prevented an irreparable judicial error,” Raisian said, adding that the court also ruled that Salehi’s “previous sentence (6 years and three months) was also without compliance with the rules of a multiplicity of crimes.”
