A female Iranian singer who refused to wear a hijab and was arrested for not adhering to the strict Islamic dress code has been freed on bail for £560,000.
Singer Parastoo Ahmadi appeared in a court in Tehran where she was charged and released on bail of around 30-billion Rials (£560,000), Ham Mihan daily reported.
The paper added that ‘charges were also explained to musicians of the virtual concert,’ and they were freed on bail of about £30,000 each.
The concert was filmed in Iran with Ahmadi and her four-man backing band on keyboard, percussion and guitars, on December 11 with no audience present.
The band were playing outside on a stage in the grounds of a traditional caravanserai complex, Iran International reported.
Parastoo Ahmadi was not wearing a headscarf and was bare-shouldered in a long, flowing black dress. She streamed the concert on her YouTube channel.
The judiciary’s news website then said a ‘legal case’ was filed against the singer and the production staff for performing ‘music without observing legal and religious standards’.
Ahmadi was arrested in Sari City, capital of the northern province of Mazandaran, on Saturday December 14.
Parastoo Ahmady, 27, was arrested in Sari City, capital of the northern province of Mazandaran
Ahmady posted her concert on YouTube, saying: ‘I am Parastoo, a girl who wants to sing for the people I love. This is a right I could not ignore; singing for the land I love passionately’
Under rules imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, women must cover their hair and neck and wear loose-fitting clothes in public. They are also not allowed to sing solo in public.
However, increasing numbers of women are appearing without a hijab, the trend has started in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s death in custody in September 2022.
She had been arrested for allegedly violating the dress code.
Ahmadi had posted her concert on YouTube the day before, saying: ‘I am Parastoo, a girl who wants to sing for the people I love. This is a right I could not ignore; singing for the land I love passionately.’
The online concert has been viewed more than 1.4million times in a twenty-seven-minute video which was posted last week.
Her lawyer said two musicians in Ahmadi’s band – Soheil Faghih Nasiri and Ehsan Beiraghdar – were also arrested in Tehran on Saturday.
Comments on the singer’s YouTube video – which is a platform banned in Iran – praised her bravery and voice, with many saying they were moved to tears.
Some hailed her as ‘the woman of freedom’ and one said: ‘This is beyond art. It is a historical movement and a symbol of resistance against restrictions.’
Iranian authorities have triggered widespread outrage after a female singer who refused to wear a hijab while singing in a virtual concert on YouTube was arrested.
Her lawyer said Tehran later bowed to calls for her release, in a sign of the regime’s growing nervousness over protests.
Tehran-based activist Hossein Ronaghi called her arrest as ‘repression’ and urged people to protest the ‘exclusion of women from music’.
Women are not allowed to sing by themselves in public in Iran.
This means that all women – including girls as young as 12 – must wear a hijab or face strict punishments.
Sanctions range from fines to 15 years in prison, to even the death penalty under the charge of ‘corruption on earth’.
It also brings a stricter level of surveillance to monitor women and ensure they are complying. It applies to women both in public spaces and online.
A statement released by UN experts described this law as ‘an intensification of state control over women’s bodies in Iran and is a further assault on women’s rights and freedoms.’
The experts said that the enforcement will likely escalate violence against women and girls while further embedding systematic gender-based discrimination.
Ms Ahmadi adds to the growing number of women publicly defying the Islamic Republic’s laws.
Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, women were banned at first from singing altogether, then from singing or dancing solo before mixed-gender audiences.
Female vocalists could perform for male audiences only as a part of a chorus. But they are allowed to sing in a hall for female-only audiences.
Also based on Iranian and Islamic law, women are not allowed to appear without a hijab in front of men who are not related.
In Iran, the hijab – and the all-encompassing black chador worn by some – has long been a political symbol as well, particularly after becoming mandatory in the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
For observant Muslim women, the head covering is a sign of piety before God and modesty in front of men outside their families.
There were protests across Iran in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest by the country’s morality police over allegedly not wearing her hijab.
While police became hesitant to strictly enforce the Islamic dress code – possibly to avoid even wider demonstrations and displays of defiance – in recent weeks the authorities’ tone has changed.
In 2022, Parastoo performed a rendition of Az Khoon-e Javanan-e Vatan (From the Blood of the Youth of the Nation) during an anti-veil protest after Ms Amini died in custody after being arrested for violating the dress code.
Parastoo is also a pianist and has 47,800 subscribers on YouTube and 7,300 monthly listeners on Spotify.
Ms Amini went into a coma after being arrested in Tehran and died while she was in police custody in hospital.
Other women showed their anger at the news on social media by posting other examples of heavy-handed action by morality police against women without hijabs.
The Islamic Republic’s officials told local media that Amini suffered a heart attack while detained by morality police, denying reports that she had been beaten.
‘They killed my angel,’ her mother told the BBC Persian service. She said her daughter was healthy and without any problems.
She was on a visit to the Iranian capital with her family when she was detained by the special police unit that enforces the strict dress rules for women, including the compulsory headscarf.
‘She came here, they took her and this is what they did to her,’ her mother said.
An unnamed Iranian woman has sustained horrific injuries after she was flogged more than 70 times by guards for refusing to wear a hijab. Image shows a massive bruise on the woman’s back as she holds a slogan that says: ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’
The interior ministry and Tehran’s prosecutor launched probes into the case of Mahsa Amini after a call by President Ebrahim Raisi, state media reported, but her uncle was quoted by the Emtedad news website as saying the 22-year-old has died after being taken to a hospital following her detention at a station of the morality police.
Last month, a horrific video showed the injuries an Iranian woman sustained after she was viciously flogged by guards more than 70 times when she refused to abide by the nation’s strict Islamic dress code laws.
The harrowing clip, which was shared on X by Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, showed an unnamed Tehran woman in her underwear showing her injuries.
Footage showed how the woman’s entire back was bruised, as well as the top of the back of her thighs.
Grim purplish-red marks could also be seen across her chest.
According to Alinejad, the clip was personally sent to her by the woman, who said she was arrested after she refused to wear a hijab.
After several months of court hearings, the woman was sentenced to 74 lashes, which caused the severe injuries shown in the clip.
In her X post, Alinejad wrote: ‘This video, sent to me by a woman from Tehran, shows her scars from being lashed for not wearing a hijab.
‘As the regime prepares to enforce [the] Hijab bill, remember: Gender apartheid in Iran is systemic slavery’.
In a separate post, Alinejad shared an image of the same woman’s bruised back as she holds a sign with the slogan: ‘Woman, Life Freedom’.
Alinejad captioned the post: ‘This is the brutal reality of life for women under the Islamic Republic in Iran. A woman in Tehran sent me this photo of her scarred back, flogged for the ‘crime’ of showing her hair. Yet, she refuses to be silent.
An unidentified female student was arrested on Saturday in Iran after she was spotted walking around the campus of Tehran’s Islamic Azad University science and research branch in her underwear
The student reportedly sustained severe injuries following the assault during her arrest
‘Holding a Woman, Life, Freedom slogan, she took this photo as a powerful act of defiance declaring: ‘The morality police arrested me for resisting their van. My ‘crime’ was unveiling. After months of court hearings, I was sentenced to 74 lashes. The cleric overseeing the punishment stood there to ensure it was carried out. I won’t give up my fight against this brutal regime, but we are fed up with living as prisoners in our own homeland.’
‘Her scars tell the story of oppression, but her courage speaks of a revolution.
‘This is a barbaric law, this is terrorism.’
It came after a 16-year-old girl tragically took her life in Iran the month before after she was threatened with expulsion by her school after she was recorded dancing without a hijab.
An image of Arezoo Khavari’s final moments, which shows her balancing on the edge of a building, circulated on X following her death, with several social media users condemning Iran’s strict dress code laws.
The teen’s tragic death and the circumstances around it came just days after an Iranian woman who stripped down to her underwear in protest over hijab laws was arrested.
The young unidentified woman was seen in footage walking around the campus of Tehran’s Islamic Azad University science and research branch before security guards detained her.
The widely circulated video on social media shows the woman sitting and pacing back and forth with her arms crossed around the campus in her underwear.
