Iran denied media reports
Confusion over 99 lashes for Cristiano Ronaldo
October 14, 2023, 5:07 p.m
When Cristiano Ronaldo travels to Iran for an Al-Nassr game in mid-September, he also wants to meet Fatemeh Hamami, who is in a wheelchair. She adores him. He cannot yet suspect that this will result in a draconian punishment. But now Iran is denying such rumors.
The Iranian embassy in Spain has rejected media reports that five-time world footballer Cristiano Ronaldo was sentenced to 99 lashes in Iran. “We strictly deny that there has been a court ruling against an international athlete in Iran,” the embassy wrote on social networks. Ronaldo traveled to Iran for a game on September 18th and 19th and was warmly received by the people and authorities there, it was said.
Previously, media reports, including in Spain, had caused a stir, according to which the Portuguese could expect drastic punishment if they were to enter Iran. The background is said to be that Ronaldo met the artist Fatemeh Hamami during his trip to Iran with his club Al-Nassr FC from Saudi Arabia.
Hamani can only move one foot
Fatemeh Hamani is 85 percent paralyzed. She sits in a wheelchair. For several years now, she has been seen repeatedly on social media drawing portraits of Cristiano Ronaldo with her right foot. “I firmly believe that he will see my pictures at some point,” she wrote on Instagram on November 16, 2018. When the meeting happened, of course her channels were full of it.
“I’m glad that one of my dreams has come true,” she wrote a week ago in a picture that showed her with Ronaldo and a jersey he signed with “For dear Fatima, the best artist in the world.”
In a video that the club subsequently published, you can see the 38-year-old hugging the woman and kissing her on the head. The exchange of affection between unmarried people is forbidden in Iran. Ronaldo’s “sincere and humane” meeting with Hamami was praised and admired by the people and authorities in Iran, the Iranian embassy in Madrid said. Ronaldo himself did not comment on the reports.