Iran Jails 'Zombie Angelina' Instagrammer for 10 Years

An Iranian teenager has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for photoshopping her appearance on Instagram to look like an Angelina Jolie zombie.

Sahar Tabar, 19, whose real name is Fatemeh Khishvand, was arrested last year on charges of including blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging corruption among the young. She had amassed nearly half a million followers on Instagram at the time of her arrest, the Guardian reported.

Many of the photos and videos shared resemble Hollywood star Angelina Jolie.

At one point Tabar called on Jolie to campaign for her release, saying: “The Islamic Republic has a history of tormenting women. We need to be united against this gender apartheid.”

Iran also handed a nine-year jail sentence to a British-Iranian anthropologist for studying child marriage and female genital mutilation and ordered him to pay a fine of over $700,000 in cash, as Breitbart Jerusalem reported.

Kameel Ahmady was sentenced by Iran’s Revolutionary Court on charges of cooperation with institutions seeking to topple Iran’s Islamic government, promoting homosexuality, cooperating with hostile media, visiting Israel as a reporter for the BBC, and engaging in “subversive” research.

Ahmady was detained in August 2019 on suspicion of being affiliated with institutes that have ties with foreign intelligence services but was released on bail three months later.

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said Ahmady had been a target for his work “on politically sensitive topics including child marriage, LGBTQ issues and female genital mutilation.”

Ahmady said on Twitter he had been denied access to a lawyer.

“Contrary to all…hope for a fair trial, I was sentenced after being denied access to a lawyer during 100 days of detention and extrajudicial interrogations, and after two unprofessional trial sessions full of judicial violations,” Ahmady tweeted.

Travel to Israel and homosexuality are both illegal in Iran, with the first carrying a sentence of up to five years while the second carries a death sentence if violators are found to have had sexual intercourse.

Iran is holding another British-Iranian national, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, on charges of espionage and plotting to overthrow the regime. Dual citizenship is not recognized in Iran.