TEHRAN — Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi and eight members of her production team have been sentenced to 74 lashes after a livestreamed concert in which the 29-year-old artist performed without a mandatory hijab, according to court documents and rights groups, The Guardian reported on Thursday.

The December 2024 performance, streamed on Ahmadi’s YouTube channel, featured the patriotic song Az Khoone Javanane Vatan (“From the Blood of the Youth of the Homeland”). The video quickly went viral, amassing millions of views and briefly leading to the detention of Ahmadi and several musicians before their release.

Bahar Ghandehari, the director of advocacy at the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, told The Guardian, “Ahmadi’s punishment of 74 lashes for merely singing and appearing without a hijab is yet another reminder that human rights conditions in Iran have not changed, despite the Iranian authorities’ wartime propaganda campaign aimed at improving their image.”

Orange County is home to one of the nation’s largest Iranian American communities, with recent demographic analyses estimating roughly 37,000 to nearly 40,000 residents of Iranian ancestry—about 1 to 1.3 percent of the county’s 3.2 million people, a share that ranks second in California behind Los Angeles County and places Orange County near the top nationally for both the size and concentration of its Iranian population.

Iranian singer and pianist Parastoo Ahmadi, 29, is a Nowshahr-born folk and traditional music artist whose online performances and “Caravanserai Concert” at Dayr-e Gachin Caravanserai have made her a prominent voice in Iran’s women-led cultural protest movement, blending cinematic training from Soureh/Sooreh University with politically charged songs like “Air of Freedom”.