[IsraelTimes] Taraneh Alidoosti, who starred in Oscar-winning film, released on bail after being arrested for Instagram posts voicing support for demonstrators.
Iran
 ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites....
released a prominent actress from an Oscar-winning film on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after she was nabbed
Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages!
for expressing support for anti-government protests, local reports said.
Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency said Taraneh Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning "The Salesman," was released on bail. Her mother, Nadere Hakimelahi, had earlier said she would be released in a post on Instagram.
After her release from the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran on Wednesday, Alidoosti posed with flowers among her friends. No further details have been released about her case.
Alidoosti was among several Iranian celebrities to express support for the nationwide protests and criticize the authorities’ violent mostly peaceful crackdown on dissent. She had posted at least three messages in support of the protests on Instagram before her account was disabled.
One message had expressed solidarity with the first man to be executed on charges linked to the protests, which were triggered by the death of a woman in police custody and have escalated into widespread calls for the overthrow of holy manal rule.
The protests mark one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Theocratic Republic since it was established after the 1979 revolution, and have prompted a heavy crackdown by security forces, who have used live ammunition, bird shot and tear gas to disperse protesters, according to rights groups.
Mohsen Shekari was executed December 9 after being charged by an Iranian court with blocking a street in Tehran and attacking a member of the country’s security forces with a machete. A week later, Iran executed a second prisoner, Majidreza Rahnavard, by public hanging. He had been accused of stabbing two members of the paramilitary Basij militia, which is leading the crackdown.
Activists say at least a dozen people have been sentenced to death in closed-door hearings over charges linked to the protests.
″His name was Mohsen Shekari," Alidoosti wrote on an account with some 8 million followers before her arrest. "Every international organization who is watching this bloodshed and not taking action, is a disgrace to humanity."
At least 516 protesters have been killed and over 19,000 people have been arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has closely monitored the unrest. Iranian authorities have not provided an official count of those killed or detained.
Khamenei, who has said little about the protests, spoke about Islamic dress on Wednesday in a meeting with women, saying the hijab is necessary but that those who do not "completely observe" the practice "should not be accused of being non-religious or against the revolution."
Even before the protests, many Iranian women wore the headscarf loosely, and authorities sometimes eased off on enforcing it, particularly during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani
...Iran's moderate president, which he is, relative to his predecessor, which doesn't mean he's anything but a puppet of the nearest holy man...
, a relative moderate who governed from 2013 to 2021. His successor, the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, had moved to tighten the restrictions.
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. 
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