FILE— Voria Ghafouri, then an Iranian national soccer team player, right, fights for the ball with Iraqi midfielder Hussein Ali, during the AFC Asian Cup soccer match at the Al Maktoum Stadium in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 16, 2019. The semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies reported on Thursday,

Nov. 24, 2022, that Iran arrested Ghafouri, a prominent former member of its national soccer team for insulting the national soccer team and criticizing the

                                     government as authorities grapple with nationwide protests. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File)

Newsnomics AJAY ANGELINA reporter | Iran arrested a former national soccer team player Voria Ghafouri on Thursday Nov 24 over his propagandas against the Iranian government as authorities grapple with nationwide

protests that have cast a shadow over its competition at the world cup. The reports of his arrest came

ahead of Friday’s World Cup match between Iran and Wales. 

The semiofficial Fars and Tasnim News agencies reported that Voria Ghafouri was arrested for “insulting the

national soccer team and propagandizing against the government.”

Ghafouri is a member of Iran’s Kurdish minority not chosen to go to the World cup, has been an outspoken

critics of Iranian government policies throughout his career in the past. He objected to a longstanding ban on women spectators at men’s soccer matches as well as Iran’s confrontational foreign policy, which has led to

crippling Western sanctions.

More recently, he expressed sympathy for the family of 22 years Mahsa Amini whose death while in the

custody of Iran's morality police ‘ignited the latest protests’ are now entering their third month. In recent days Ghafouri also called for an end to a ‘violent crackdown on pretests’ in Iran's western Kurdistan region.

The western Kurdish region of the country to which both Amini and Ghafouri belongs, has been the

epicenter of the protests that rapidly escalated into nationwide demonstrations calling for the overthrow of

the Islamic Republic. Shops were closed in the region on Thursday following calls for a general strike.

At least 442 protesters have been killed and more than 18,000 detained since the start of the unrest,

according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has been monitoring the pretests.

However, few days ago during the opening match against England at the FIFA World Cup on Monday, Iran’s

national soccer team players stood silent while the Iranian anthem played inside the Khalifa International

Stadium in Qatar in an apparent show of support for the ongoing protests back home.