According to the judiciary, Iran detained a well-known actor on Saturday after she expressed support for the three-month-old protest movement that was started in response to the death of a woman in detention.
According to the judiciary’s Mizan Online news website, Taraneh Alidoosti, 38, was detained “by direction of the judicial authority” because she “did not offer documentation for some of her statements” regarding the protests.
Alidoosti was one of “several figures and a number of celebrities” who were questioned or detained, according to the statement, “after certain unfounded comments about the recent events and the publication of incendiary 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 December 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 September 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.
Alidoosti uploaded a picture to Instagram on the day that Amini passed away with the caption, “Damnation to this captivity.”
Don’t forget what Iranian women go through, read the post’s description, which urged readers to “speak her name, spread the word.”
On November 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.
Iranian protester Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, was publicly hanged on December 12 just days after Shekari was put to death.
The death penalty has been imposed on nine additional suspects who were detained in relation to the incident.
Since the protests began, thousands of individuals have been jailed, and 400 have been given prison terms of up to 10 years for their role in the unrest, according to Iran’s judiciary on Tuesday.
