Iranian Underground Rappers Arrested For 'Insulting Sacred Values'
One hundred Iranian rappers have been arrested on charges of "sacrilege" after producing and releasing a video deemed offense to Islamic culture.
One hundred Iranian rappers have been arrested on charges of "sacrilege" after producing and releasing a video deemed offense to Islamic culture.
Akbar Qasemi, the head of the Intelligence Organization of Police Command in Semnan, announced Sunday that the musicians were identified and detained less than four hours after the video's release.
The video, titled '100', was produced in the Phoenix Commercial Tower in Semnan and as a result, police officials sealed four commercial units in the tower.
Qasemi did not disclose the names of any of the detained rappers but stated "the primary actors in the video were 10 individuals, all of whom were arrested with the police's intelligence oversight."
Simultaneously, police released a video of what appear to be forced confessions from several of the individuals involved in creating the rap clip, in which the faces of the individuals were blurred and not easily identifiable.
Protest rappers and dissenting musicians in Iran have consistently faced pressure from regime agencies in recent years, with some of them being detained on multiple occasions.
During the Women, Life, Freedom protests, at least two well-known rap artists, Toomaj Salehi and Saman Yasin, have been detained by security forces.
