Iran Arrests Famous Actress Who Called Execution ‘Disgrace To Humanity’

Iranian state media IRNA said Alidoosti was detained because she failed to provide “documentation in line with her claims,” one week after she expressed solidarity in an Instagram post with a man executed in recent anti-government protests, multiple outlets reported Saturday.

In the post, she criticized the execution of Shekari, who officials claimed blocked a street and attacked a security official with a machete (charges his family disputes).

It’s the latest high-profile case of the Iranian government’s crackdown on protesters, with Amir Nasr-Azadani, a former professional soccer player, facing a possible death sentence for participating in what Iranian police claim was a group that killed a police colonel (Fifpro, soccer’s player’s union strongly condemned the arrest).

Last week, Iranian officials executed a second person, Majidreza Rahnavard, who authorities claim stabbed members of Iran’s paramilitary group, the Basij Resistance Force, but whose trial was condemned by human rights observes as based on “coerced confessions, after a grossly unfair process”; his body was hung from a crane in an apparent warning to protesters.

Alidoosti, meanwhile, had been using social media as a form of protest, posting a photo of herself on Instagram last month holding a piece of paper that read: “Woman, Life Freedom.”

In the photo, Alidoosti was not wearing a hijab, which are required by law for women in Iran—an act of apparent solidarity with Iranian women who have been protesting for months against the country’s strict moral police.