News summary of tensions with Iran and Israel's war in Gaza for April 25, 2024

Iranian opposition rapper Tomag Salehi was previously arrested on charges related to supporting the widespread protest movement in Iran last year. (Tomag/YouTube)

Iranian dissident rapper Toumaj Salehi, who was arrested, held in solitary confinement and tortured, was sentenced on Tuesday to prison for his role in widespread protests that spread across Iran in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, who died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. .

“An order has been issued for the execution of Tomaj Salehi,” Salehi’s lawyer, Amir Raysyan, said on Twitter on Wednesday.

In an unprecedented move, the first division of the Revolutionary Court in Isfahan overturned the Supreme Court’s decision on Saleh’s case, upheld the original ruling of “spreading corruption on earth” and issued the maximum penalty, death, according to pro-reform Iranian media and Entekhab.

State media said that Salehi's sentence could be reduced by the pardon committee if he appeals again.

Witnesses said Salehi, 32, who has criticized the Iranian regime and spoken out against the government in rap lyrics and on social media, was briefly released from prison last year before police violently arrested him again and sent him to prison in Isfahan on time.

The United Nations experts said in a statement published by the Human Rights Office that he was arrested again after he appeared in a video clip in which he revealed that he had been tortured and placed in solitary confinement for 252 days after his arrest in October 2022.

Another artist, Iranian Kurdish rapper Saman Yassin, who was also arrested at the height of protests in Iran in 2022, was hospitalized twice in less than a year, according to reformist news outlet IranWire.

A court in Tehran sentenced Yassin to five years in prison, according to the Hengaw Kurdish Human Rights Organization.

The office of the US special envoy to Iran said on Twitter: “We strongly condemn the death sentence imposed on Tomaj Salehi and the five-year prison sentence imposed on Iranian Kurdish rapper Saman Yassin. We call for his immediate release.” “These are the latest examples of the regime’s brutal abuse of its citizens, its disregard for human rights, and its fear of the democratic change sought by the Iranian people.”

UN experts also called for Salehi's release and urged the Iranian authorities to cancel the death sentence decision.

“We are concerned about the imposition of the death penalty and the alleged ill-treatment of Mr. Salehi, which appears to be related only to the exercise of his right to freedom of artistic expression and creativity,” the experts said.

Salehi's political sponsor in Europe, German Member of Parliament Ye Wan Rhee, described the death sentence against Salehi as “ridiculous and inhumane.”

“It is still not entirely clear how this ruling was issued,” he said in a tweet on Wednesday. “It is unbelievable how irresponsibly and arbitrarily the Iranian regime treats defendants. It is impossible to recognize the rule of law when responsible courts are in disarray.

CNN's Mustafa Salem contributed to this report.