Iran releases Oscar-winning film actress held over protests

Iran released a prominent actress from an Oscar-winning film
on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after she was jailed for criticizing a
crackdown on anti-government protests, local reports said.
Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency said Taraneh
Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning 2016 film,
“The Salesman,” was released on bail. Her mother, Nadere Hakimelahi, had
earlier said she would be released in a post on Instagram.
After her release from the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran
on Wednesday, Alidoosti posed with bunches of flowers, surrounded by friends.
No further details have been released about her case.
Alidoosti was among several Iranian celebrities to express support
for the nationwide protests and criticize the authorities’ violent clampdown on
dissent. She had posted at least three messages in support of the protests on
Instagram before her account was disabled.
One message had expressed solidarity with the first man to
be executed on charges linked to the protests, which were triggered by the
death of a woman in police custody and have escalated into widespread calls for
the overthrow of Iran’s ruling clerics.
The protests mark one of the biggest challenges to the
Islamic Republic since it was established after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Security forces have used live ammunition, bird shot, tear gas and batons to
disperse protesters, according to rights groups.
Mohsen Shekari was executed Dec. 9 after being charged by an
Iranian court with blocking a street in Tehran and attacking a member of the
country’s security forces with a machete. A week later, Iran executed a second
prisoner, Majidreza Rahnavard, by public hanging. He had been accused of
stabbing two members of the paramilitary Basij militia, which is leading the
crackdown.
Activists say at least a dozen people have been sentenced to
death in closed-door hearings over charges linked to the protests.
″His name was Mohsen Shekari,” Alidoosti wrote on an account
with some 8 million followers before her arrest. “Every international
organization who is watching this bloodshed and not taking action, is a
disgrace to humanity.”
The Iranian reports on Alidoosti’s release did not say
whether she has been charged with anything or if she will stand trial. It was
also unclear whether she faces travel restrictions as part of the terms of her
release.
At least 516 protesters have been killed and over 19,000
people have been arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group
that has closely monitored the unrest. Iranian authorities have not provided an
official count of those killed or detained.
Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi, two other famous
Iranian actresses, were arrested in November for expressing solidarity with
protesters on social media. Voria Ghafouri, an Iranian soccer star, was also
arrested that month for ”insulting the national soccer team and propagandizing
against the government.” All three have been released.
The protests began in mid-September, when 22-year-old Mahsa
Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly
violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Women have played a leading
role in the protests, with many publicly stripping off the compulsory Islamic
headscarf, known as the hijab.
The protesters say they are fed up after decades of
political and social repression. One of the main slogans has been “Death to the
dictator,” referring to Iran’s 83-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, who has held the country’s highest office for more than three
decades.
Iranian officials blame the protests on the U.S. and other
foreign powers. State-linked media have highlighted attacks on security forces,
while authorities have imposed heavy restrictions on coverage of the
demonstrations, including periodically cutting off internet access.
Khamenei, who has said little about the protests, spoke
about Islamic dress on Wednesday in a meeting with women, saying the hijab is
necessary but that those who do not “completely observe” the practice “should
not be accused of being non-religious or against the revolution.”
Even before the protests, many Iranian women wore the
headscarf loosely, and authorities sometimes eased off on enforcing it,
particulary during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate who
governed from 2013 to 2021. His successor, the hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, had
moved to tighten the restrictions.
Alidoosti had previously criticised the Iranian government
and its police force before this year’s protests.
In June 2020, she was given a suspended five-month prison
sentence after she criticized the police on Twitter in 2018 for assaulting a
woman who had removed her headscarf.
In “The Salesman,” she played a woman whose relationship
with her husband fractures after she is sexually assaulted in their apartment.
The story unfolds against the backdrop of a local staging of Arthur Miller’s
classic play, “Death of a Salesman,” in which the woman and her husband are
cast as the main characters.
Other well-known movies Alidoosti has starred in include
“The Beautiful City” and “About Elly.”