Iran has been rocked by protests since the Sept. 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being detained by the morality police, a unit of Iran’s police force. Many consider the protests one of the most serious challenges to Iran’s theocratic rule since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Alidoosti had previously criticized the Iranian government and its police force before this year’s protests. In June 2020, she was given a suspended five-month prison sentence after she criticized the police on Twitter in 2018 for assaulting a woman who had removed her headscarf.
