An Iranian court sentenced fashionable singer Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, known as Tataloo, to death on appeal after being found guilty of blasphemy, according to local media reports.
“The Supreme Court accepted the prosecutor’s objection” to a previous five-year prison sentence for crimes including blasphemy, the reformist newspaper Etemad reported Sunday.
He said that “the case was reopened, and this time the accused was sentenced to death for insulting the prophet,” referring to Islam’s prophet Muhammad.
The report adds that the verdict is not final and can still be appealed.
The 37-year-old underground musician had been living in Istanbul since 2018 before Turkish police handed him over to Iran in December 2023.
Since then he has been detained in Iran.
Tataloo had also been sentenced to ten years in prison for promoting “prostitution” and in other cases was accused of spreading “propaganda” against the Islamic Republic and publishing “obscene content.”
The heavily tattooed singer, known for combining rap, pop and R&B, was previously courted by conservative politicians as a way to reach out to young, liberal-minded Iranians.
Tataloo even had an awkward televised meeting in 2017 with ultraconservative Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who later died in a helicopter crash.
In 2015, Tataloo released a song in support of Iran’s nuclear program which then collapsed in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first US presidency.
