An Iranian woman known for her frightening Instagram posts has been jailed for 10 years by authorities claiming her social media activities corrupted young people and disrespected the Islamic Republic.
Sahar Tabar, whose real name is Fatemeh Khishvand, was charged with “blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging youths to corruption,” The Guardian reported. Tabar is best known for a viral hoax in 2017 in which she claimed to have undergone 50 surgeries in just a few months to look like her idol, actress Angelina Jolie.
The gaunt, freakish images of Tabar caused an internet sensation, and the woman claimed she was willing “to do anything” to look like Jolie, including dropping weight to become frighteningly thin.
A month after the images went viral, Tabar admitted to Russia’s Sputnik news that the images were due to prosthetics, Photoshop, and some amazing makeup skills.
“No, of course. This is Photoshop and makeup,” she told Sputnik. “Every time I publish a photo, I paint my face in an increasingly funny way. It is a way of expressing yourself, a kind of art. My fans know that this is not my real face.”
Tabar said she never intended to look like Jolie or a “Rotting Bride,” but now she’s embraced the looks, The Daily Wire previously reported.
Eight months after Tabar first gained attention, she posted photos of how she really looks. Her “zombie-like” images gained her more than 486,000 followers on Instagram.
Tabar was later arrested and charged for her Instagram posts. Earlier this year, Tabar pleaded to be released, claiming she had contracted COVID-19, the Guardian reported.
“At one point Tabar called on the actor Angelina Jolie, whom she resembled in some of her photos, to campaign for her release, saying: ‘The Islamic Republic has a history of tormenting women. We need to be united against this gender apartheid,’” the outlet reported.
She told the outlet she had been cleared on two of the charges and still hopes for a pardon.
“Iranian state TV broadcast her confession in late October last year. Her expressions of remorse drew a great deal of sympathy. The report described Tabar as ‘a victim with an abnormal personality and mental state’ who sought ‘vulgarity’ on social media,” The Guardian reported. “Medical records also suggested that she had a mental illness, with a history of visits to psychiatric hospitals, making the 10-year sentence even less explicable. Her lawyers had asked for her to be bailed, and pointed to her age at the time she committed the alleged offences.”
When Tabar revealed what she really looked like in 2018, she admitted to having a “nose job, enlarged mouth, and liposuction,” according to the New York Post, but the rest is from Photoshop and makeup.
The Daily Mail reported that initial reports originally suggested Tabar would only face between three months and two years in jail.