Iran released a well-known actress on Wednesday, state media reported, after she spent two and a half weeks in detention for condemning the government’s harsh response to the mass protests that have upended the country since September.
The actress, Taraneh Alidoosti, 38, was arrested on Dec. 18 after urging Iranians to support the anti-government protests, becoming one of the most high-profile targets in Iran’s campaign against sports stars, rappers, filmmakers, actors and other celebrities who have expressed solidarity with the demonstrators.
On Wednesday, Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency said Ms. Alidoosti, the star of the Academy Award-winning 2016 film “The Salesman,” directed by Asghar Farhadi, was released on bail, citing her lawyer, Zahra Minouie.
In some photographs after her release, Ms. Alidoosti was shown standing outside Evin Prison — the infamous facility in Tehran where Iran routinely locks up political opponents, academics, writers and other prominent dissidents — pointedly without wearing a head scarf. (In others she was shown with her hair loosely covered by a scarf.) Before her arrest, she had posted a photo of herself with her hair uncovered, holding a sign signaling her support for the protesters.
The protests first swept across Iran in mid-September after the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by Iran’s morality police, accused of violating the law mandating head scarves and modest dress for women. Though the protests at first focused on dismantling the hijab law, they quickly broadened to demand an end to Iran’s entire ruling establishment.
As the authorities cracked down with bullets and beatings, resulting in hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests, Ms. Alidoosti became one of the most famous voices cheering on the protests and denouncing the brutal response.
“Your silence means supporting oppression and oppressors,” Ms. Alidoosti wrote on her social media accounts in December, after the authorities announced the execution by hanging of Mohsen Shekari, 23, one of two protesters Iran has executed so far.
In reporting her arrest, state news agencies described her posts as “unsubstantiated comments about recent events” and “the publication of provocative material.” The judiciary said in a statement that it had summoned several celebrities, including Ms. Alidoosti, for posting claims it said were unproven about what the government calls the “riots,” but that because she had not offered any evidence, she was arrested.
Ms. Alidoosti was also prosecuted in June 2020 for Twitter posts criticizing the police for assaulting an Iranian woman who had taken off her head scarf. And one of her signals of support for the protests this time was to post a photo without having her hair covered. When she was arrested in December, however, her Twitter and Instagram accounts were taken down. Those accounts remained unavailable on Wednesday evening.
Iran’s government blames the protests on a conspiracy by foreign countries, and it has remained defiant in the face of international condemnation. The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a meeting with hundreds of Iranian women on Wednesday that Westerners were “hypocritical” for criticizing the place of women in Islam while oppressing women in their own countries.
“The modernized West and its decadent culture are really guilty in this regard and have committed a crime against women’s honor and dignity,” he said, according to ISNA, while defending Islam’s “advanced” and “just” view on women.
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
