Iranian actor jailed for supporting protests has been released

Iran released a prominent actor on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after she was jailed for expressing support for anti-government protests, local reports said.

Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency said Taraneh Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning “The Salesman,” was released on bail. Her mother, Nadere Hakimelahi, had earlier said she would be released in a post on Instagram.

Ms. Alidoosti was among several Iranian celebrities to express support for the nationwide protests and criticizing the authorities’ violent crackdown on dissent. She had posted at least three messages in support of the protests on Instagram before her account was disabled.

One message had expressed solidarity with the first man to be executed on charges linked to the protests, which were triggered by the death of a woman in police custody and have escalated into widespread calls for the overthrow of clerical rule.

The protests mark one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Republic since it was established after the 1979 revolution, and have prompted a heavy crackdown by security forces, who have used live ammunition, bird shot, and tear gas to disperse protesters, according to rights groups.

Mohsen Shekari was executed Dec. 9 after being charged by an Iranian court with blocking a street in Tehran and attacking a member of the country’s security forces with a machete. A week later, Iran executed a second prisoner, Majidreza Rahnavard, by public hanging. He had been accused of stabbing two members of the paramilitary Basij militia, which is leading the crackdown.

Activists say at least a dozen people have been sentenced to death in closed-door hearings over charges linked to the protests.

At least 516 protesters have been killed and over 19,000 people have been arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has closely monitored the unrest. Iranian authorities have not provided an official count of those killed or detained.

The protests began in mid-September, when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Women have played a leading role in the protests, with many publicly stripping off the compulsory Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab.

The protesters say they are fed up after decades of political and social repression. One of the main slogans has been “Death to the dictator,” referring to Iran’s 83-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has held the country’s highest office for more than three decades.

Mr. Khamenei, who has said little about the protests, spoke about Islamic dress on Wednesday in a meeting with women, saying the hijab is necessary but that those who do not “completely observe” the practice “should not be accused of being non-religious or against the revolution.”

Even before the protests, many Iranian women wore the headscarf loosely, and authorities sometimes eased off on enforcing it, particularly during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate who governed from 2013 to 2021. His successor, the hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, had moved to tighten the restrictions.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.