Iran court upholds flogging sentence for singer who performed without hijab

An appeals court in Iran has confirmed a sentence of 74 lashes handed to a prominent singer who performed without the mandatory hijab, lawyers say.

Parastoo Ahmadi sang while wearing a sleeveless dress during a concert livestreamed on her YouTube channel in December 2024, external. Iran’s laws ban public performances by women and require them to wear headscarves and modest clothing.

Iran’s judiciary launched proceedings against the 29-year-old after the video went viral, gaining millions of views, saying the performance was “in violation of the country’s legal and cultural regulations”.

In June, a criminal court in Qom reportedly found Ahmadi and eight members of her band and production team guilty of charges including “offending public decency” through the publication of “obscene and indecent material”.

In addition to being sentenced to 74 lashes, they were banned from audiovisual activities and from leaving the country for two years.

On Friday, the defendants’ appeal was “rejected” by a higher court without a hearing, according to their lawyers.

“In our view, holding the concert was not a crime at all,” one of the lawyers told the BBC. “The trial court imposed one of the harshest punishments for these charges, although fines and less severe penalties were also available.”

“The Court of Appeal, despite having the option of holding a hearing, did not hold a hearing and upheld the judgment. It appears that the main reason for issuing this judgment was to deter the recurrence of similar events.”

News of the initial sentence sparked widespread reaction among Iranians on social media.

“May these dark days come to an end, and may women regain the freedom to choose how they live and dress, and may artistic expression once again flourish in our precious homeland,” exiled singer Googoosh wrote on Instagram at the time.

Musician Hossein Alizadeh meanwhile said he was “willing to take 70 lashes in Parastoo Ahmadi’s place”.

Human rights activists also condemned the sentence, with Amnesty International warning that “flogging constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and violates the absolute prohibition on torture and other ill treatment”.

In January 2024, Kurdish-Iranian activist Roya Heshmati was flogged 74 times after being convicted of “violating public morals” over a photo on social media that showed her without the hijab.

She said a female officer forcibly placed a scarf on her head at a prosecutor’s office in Tehran before a male officer whipped her shoulders, back, hips and legs, according to Kurdish rights group Hengaw, external.

Under Iranian law, which is based on the country’s interpretation of Sharia, women and girls above the age of puberty must cover their hair with a hijab and wear long, loose-fitting clothing to disguise their figures.

In 2022, protests swept across the Islamic Republic following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was detained by morality police in Tehran in September that year for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”.

Women burnt their headscarves or waved them in the air at the nationwide demonstrations against the clerical establishment, during which hundreds of people were killed in a crackdown by security forces.

Since then, many women and girls have stopped covering their hair in public altogether in open defiance of the dress code. Authorities have responded with periodic waves of arrests, warnings, business closures and other measures.

When discussing hijab enforcement earlier this month, conservative politician and Expediency Council member Gholamali Haddad‑Adel – who is also the father-in-law of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – said that Iran’s war with the US and Israel meant authorities “cannot engage on this front as much as we should for the time being”.

The war began at the end of February, only weeks after Iranian security forces had violently repressed another wave of mass protests sparked by the country’s economic crisis, killing thousands of people.