She presented herself as a zombie version of Angelina Jolie: Now the Iranian Instagram star Sahar Tabar has been sentenced to ten years in prison.
The photo comes from the alleged confession video after her arrest Photo: RIB TV / afp
In one photo, scars sewn up with red thread run down the cheeks, light green strands shine in the hair, glass-blue eyes cast deep black shadows on the pale face. Sahar Tabar’s Instagram account must have looked like a horror cabinet in the past, but the Iranian government has now blocked the account and sentenced its owner to ten years in prison last Friday.
The 23-year-old Iranian Fatemeh Khishvand is behind the fictional character Sahar Tabar. Make-up and Photoshop had earned her the reputation of “Fake Angelina Jolie”, coupled with a bit of Gothic and Pop surrealism from Tim Burton. Her horror art gained her over 480,000 followers on Instagram – but on October 5, 2019, she was arrested for it. The allegations: blasphemy, incitement to violence, disregard of dress codes, income from improper means and encouragement of youth to corruption.
Tabar became known as the woman Angelina Jolie wanted to double, but when Tim Burton’s character of the Corpse Bride ended. In addition to her weird pictures, she made up the story that she had had at least 50 cosmetic operations. In an interview in December 2017, however, she said that there were only three operations in Wharheit: she only had a nose job, botox injected into her lips and fat suctioned off.
A few photos on the Instagram channel „Sahar Tabar before“ show her face, including photos with a white bandage around her nose. Iran has the highest number of nose operations in the world. The clergy allow it, because God loves beauty.
“Every time I post a photo, I make my face funnier and more fun.”
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In Iran, Facebook and Twitter are blocked
Sahar Tabar gained attention and eventually worldwide fame. Newspapers from India, Belgium and the Arab states reported on the woman who would “do anything” to look like Angelina Jolie. In December 2017, she told a Russian news portal: “Every time I publish a photo, I make my face funnier and more fun.” It is her way of expressing herself, a kind of art. That offended the authorities. In Iran, Facebook and Twitter are blocked. However, because Instagram is not blocked by the government, it has become a popular platform for young people to display provocative clothes and makeup.
Less than a month after Fatemeh Khishvand’s arrest in October 2019, the Iranian state broadcaster broadcast an interview with the star. In the post shows Khishvand a photo on her cell phone. It shows a girl with brown eyes and a loose headscarf. “I look something like that today,” she says, her face blurred by the transmitter. Fatemeh Khishvand is depicted here as the child of divorced parents, a young woman with a mental disorder.
It was not the first alleged confession video on Iranian state television. “Excuses” from dancers or dance trainers with tens of thousands of followers were already running across the screens. The Iranian government imprisoned dozens of prominent Instagramers in Iran in 2020, including models, athletes or actors like that Center for Human Rights Iran notifies.
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