According to local media, a popular musician named Tataloo, whose real name is Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, was found guilty of blasphemy and condemned to death on appeal by an Iranian court.
According to a Sunday article in the reformist weekly Etemad, “the supreme court accepted the prosecutor’s objection” to a prior five-year jail sentence for offenses including blasphemy.
In reference to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, it stated that “the case was reopened, and this time the defendant was sentenced to death for insulting the prophet.”
The report further said that the decision was subject to appeal and was not final.
Before being turned over to Iran by Turkish authorities in December 2023, the 37-year-old underground musician had been residing in Istanbul since 2018.
Since then, he has been held captive in Iran.
In addition, Tataloo received a 10-year sentence for encouraging “prostitution.” In other cases, he was accused of posting “obscene content” and spreading “propaganda” against the Islamic Republic.
Conservative lawmakers formerly courted the highly tattooed musician, who is known for fusing pop, R&B, and rap in an effort to appeal to young, liberal Iranians.
The ultra-conservative Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, who subsequently perished in a helicopter crash, even had an unpleasant encounter with Tataloo on television in 2017. Tataloo released a song in 2015 endorsing Iran’s nuclear program, which Iran had consented to dismantle in return for sanctions relief. However, the agreement fell apart in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first term as US president.
An earlier version of this article claimed that Iran’s nuclear program had collapsed in 2018, but in reality, the agreement to dismantle the program was the cause of the collapse. This was changed on January 20, 2025.
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