Iranian court sentences pop singer Tataloo to death – media

Amir Tataloo performing live in Tbilisi. Photo / Pouria Afkhami via Creative Commons

An Iranian court has sentenced popular singer Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, known as Tataloo, to death on appeal after he was convicted of blasphemy, local media reported on Sunday.

“The Supreme Court accepted the prosecutor’s objection” to a previous five-year jail term on offences including blasphemy, reformist newspaper Etemad reported online.

It said “the case was reopened, and this time the defendant was sentenced to death for insulting the prophet”, referring to Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.

The report added the verdict was not final and can still be appealed.

The 37-year-old underground musician had been living in Istanbul since 2018 before Turkish police handed him over to Iran in December 2023.

He has been in detention in Iran since then.

Tataloo was handed over to the Iranian authorities by Turkey. Photo / Pouria Afkhami via Creative Commons

Tataloo had also been sentenced to 10 years for promoting “prostitution”, and in other cases was charged with disseminating “propaganda” against the Islamic republic and publishing “obscene content”.

The heavily tattooed singer, known for combining rap, pop and R&B, was previously courted by conservative politicians as a way of reaching out to young, liberal-minded Iranians.

Tataloo even held an awkward televised meeting in 2017 with ultra-conservative Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, who later died in a helicopter crash.

In 2015, Tataloo published a song in support of Iran’s nuclear programme that later unravelled in 2018 during the first US presidency of Donald Trump.

Ebrahim Raisi meets Tataloo in 2017. Photo / Fars Media Corporation via Creative Commons

Judges shot dead

News of the sentence came as two judges were killed in a shooting on Saturday at the Supreme Court building in Tehran.

“This morning, a gunman infiltrated the Supreme Court in a planned act of assassination of two brave and experienced judges. The two judges were martyred in the act,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

Mizan said the assailant “killed himself” after the “terrorist” act.

State news agency IRNA said one other person was wounded.

Mizan identified the two slain judges as Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghisseh, who handled cases “fighting crimes against national security, espionage and terrorism”.

Judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said on state television “a person armed with a handgun entered the room” of the two judges and shot them.