December 25 2020
A teenaged girl has been sentenced to a decade in prison for flaunting herself on social media, her lawyer has announced.
Sahar Tabar, 19, whose real name is Fatemeh Khishvand, shot to prominence after posting images of her eerily gaunt face that portrayed her as a zombie. Her images gathered her 486,000 followers.
Many saw the stunt as a joke, others as social commentary, but on October 5 of last year Sahar was arrested in Tehran along with three other female Instagram “influencers.”
Journalist Masih Alinejad told Britain’s MailOnline that she had spoken to Tabar’s lawyer, who confirmed Sahar had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for “promoting public corruption.”
The charges against Tabar first included blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging youths to corruption, the Tasnim news agency reported at the time.
Tabar was detained on the orders of Tehran’s guidance court, which deals with “cultural crimes and social and moral corruption.” State broadcasting said then that Tabar was facing between three months and two years in prison.
The social media star shot to fame in 2017 after she reportedly had 50 surgeries to make her look more like the Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie.
Tabar later said her Jolie look and her zombie appearance were mostly the result of extensive make-up and editing on Photoshop, software that allows pictures to be manipulated.
Tabar said it had been her childhood dream to become famous, and that she had persisted with her efforts to build her Instagram following despite her mother’s objections.
In July 2019, Sahar unveiled her zombie look, sharing side-by-side snaps of what she said was her appearance pre- and post-surgery. She later admitted she’d had some surgery such as a nose job, lip fillers and liposuction, but said most of her unusual appearance was due to make-up and Photoshop editing.
The court, quite obviously, was neither amused nor impressed by her ingenuity.
