Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi has been sentenced to death after using his music and social media accounts to speak out against his country’s government.

According to NBC News, the Hip Hop artist is one of approximately 18,000 people believed to have been arrested during protests in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The young Kurdish Iranian woman died in September 2022 after being detained by the country’s “morality police” for not following the strict Islamic dress code.

Her death sparked weeks of protests that lead to more deaths at the hands of Iranian authorities in violent clashes with demonstrators.

Days after Amini’s death Toomaj Salehi posted a video to Instagram that saw him marching alongside other protesters. “Unity is the secret to our victory, we are all Iran’s family,” he captioned the post.

Salehi’s online commentary echoed anti-government themes in his music. One of his most recent songs, uploaded to YouTube in October, spoke directly to injustices against the Iranian people in the years since the Islamic Revolution replaced former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime with a religious fundamentalist political system.

“How many young people did you kill to build towers for yourself?” he raps in Persian on the song “Fal”. “Someone has lost their young children and someone has lost their youth/ Someone’s crime was having hair that flows free in the wind/ Someone’s crime was having a brave heart and a sharp tongue.”

 

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A post shared by Toomaj Salehi | توماج صالحی (@toomajofficial)

The state-run Iranian Students’ News Agency reported that Toomaj Salehi was arrested on October 30, 2022 under suspicion of trying to flee the country.

He was charged — and later found guilty — of “corruption on earth,” a crime that covers all offenses which the government believes “threaten social and political well-being.”

On December 6, authorities released a confession video in which the artist said: “Music can produce violence. I have made mistakes, I do apologize. I apologize to you and the society for any violence that I have instigated.”

The confession came weeks after he had been sentenced to death in November, and well ahead of the moment when Toomaj Salehi was allowed to hire a personal attorney on December 29. More than 500,000 supporters have signed a petition for his release; however, at press time he was still facing death by public hanging.

An execution date has not yet been released. Fans and supporters of Toomaj Salehi grew even more concerned after the rapper’s official Twitter account posted on Friday (January 6) that he has been beaten so badly that he may lose his eyesight.

Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, told NBC News that he does not expect the sentence to be overturned.

“These courtrooms are really not a place of justice since they don’t involve any investigation, due process or the right of a defendant to defend himself and have independent counsel,” he explained.