Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi, musicians Ehsan Beiraqdar and Soheil Faqih Nasiri, and six members of the production team for the Caravanserai Concert were ordered to be lashed 74 times by the Qom Province’s criminal courts, Iranian human rights groups, and diapora media organizations announced on Thursday.
The artists will also face a two-year travel ban and a two-year restriction on all artistic activity after the Iranian judiciary found the nine artists had offended “public decency through the production and publication of obscene and immoral content on cyberspace platforms.”
The group was first arrested after their performance was broadcast on YouTube in December 2025. They were ordered to appear before the Prosecutor’s Office for Moral Security that January.
The Qom Provincial Criminal Court prosecuted the group under Articles 638 of the Islamic Penal Code and 743 of the Computer Crimes Law, according to BBC Persian.
Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code criminalizes the performance of any “open religious taboo” or acts that offend public decency, such as appearing without a hijab, and Article 743 criminalizes the promotion or encouragement of corruption, prostitution, or acts deemed offensive to public morality via digital networks.
During Ahmadi’s performance, she sang without the hijab. Women are also forbidden from singing to any audience with male members, the punishment for which is often flogging.
Women singing not against Iranian law, lawyer argues
The Iranian legal organization Dadban reported that lawyer Mohammad Hadi Jafarpour asserted that a woman’s singing is not criminalized in Iranian law and such interpretations of the penal code are without merit.
The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, quoting the head of the Information Center of the Mazandaran Province Police Command, reported that “following the production and publication of a video by Ms. Parastoo Ahmadi that was deemed contrary to social norms and values, she was summoned to the Public Security Police and instructed to appear before the judicial authorities.”
Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad wrote in response to the verdict, “They call America the Great Satan. And then they flew to the table and signed a deal with the ‘Devil’. But a woman’s voice scared them more than any superpower ever could.
“A regime that whips women for showing their hair and singing – there’s not a normal government. This is called apartheid against women.”