On Saturday, the Iranian state media announced that one of the country's top actors, Taraneh Alidoosti, has been arrested. Alidoosti, the star of the Oscar-winning 2016 movie 'The Salesman,' was detained on charges of "spreading falsehoods" about the anti-government protests that rocked the country last month.
According to the Iranian government mouthpiece IRNA, Alidoosti was detained a week after she made a post on Instagram expressing solidarity with 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari, the first man to be executed for crimes committed during the nationwide protests.
Alidoosti was reportedly arrested because she did not provide ''any documents in line with her claims."
The actor, who has appeared in various popular Iranian TV shows, was one of the top actors in 'The Salesman,' the Iranian movie which won the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016. She has been a prominent figure in Iran and is known for supporting the MeToo movement in Iran’s cinema industry.
The actor, who has worked in award-winning movies like 'About Elly' and 'Leila’s Brothers,' is a feminist and one of the few actors who protested against the regime while staying in Iran. The daughter of a famous Iranian football player, Alidoosti is fluent in German and English and has even translated books by Alice Munro and Nicole Krauss from English to Persian.
Alidoosti caught the Iranian regime's attention when she put up a post of herself on Instagram, where she has 8 m followers, without a headscarf during the Mahsa Amini protests. She also held a sign reading "Woman, Life, Freedom" in Kurdish. The picture of Alidoosti without a hijab has been liked more than 1m times.
Her next post backing Mohsen Shekari too was widely noted. "Every international organization who is watching this bloodshed and not taking action, is a disgrace to humanity," she wrote after Shekari's execution on December 9. The 23-year-old man was charged by Iranian court with blocking a street in Tehran and attacking a member of the country’s security forces with a machete.
Though speculations were rife then that Alidoosti has a foreign passport or residence and would flee the country, the actor quashed all rumours saying she will remain in Iran at "any price."
"I have inherited this courage from the women of my land, who for years have been living their lives every day with resistance and equality, and ending with the dream of freedom," she wrote.
"I will stay, I will quit [working], I will stand with the families of the prisoners and murdered and demand their rights. I will fight for my home. I will pay whatever it takes to stand for my right, and most importantly: I believe in what we are building together today," she added.
Besides Alidoosti, two other actresses - Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi - were also arrested by authorities for expressing solidarity with protesters on social media. However, both have reportedly been released.
Meanwhile, the local rights group Committee to Counter Violence Against Women in Iranian Cinema has said on Twitter that it wasn’t clear which government department had taken Alidoosti into custody.
Anti-government protests gained strength in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old in the custody of morality police.
