Redeem now - Iran has denied claims that Cristiano Ronaldo will receive 99 lashes for hugging a woman.
- Ronaldo embraced Iranian artist Fatemeh Hamami when he met her in September.
- According to Iranian laws, the punishment for adultery includes lashings and the death penalty.
Iranian authorities have denied reports claiming that Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo is facing 99 lashes for hugging a woman in Iran.
The false claim stemmed from a meeting last month between Ronaldo and Fatemeh Hamami, an Iranian artist. Hamami, who holds a brush between her feet to paint portraits, shared a video of herself meeting Ronaldo on Instagram on September 20.
In the video, Ronaldo can be seen hugging and kissing Hamami on her forehead while receiving the portraits she had created of him.
View this post on InstagramAfter the meeting, multiple outlets including TMZ, the New York Post, and Fox Sports reported that Ronaldo was facing 99 lashes for hugging Hamami. The Post and TMZ cited unnamed Iranian media outlets in their reports. The reports claimed that Ronaldo, who has been dating model Georgina Rodriguez since 2017, had committed adultery by touching another woman.
The reports about the lashings, it turns out, were incorrect: The Iranian embassy in Spain said on October 13 that Ronaldo isn't facing any charges.
"We strongly deny the issuance of any court ruling against any international athlete in Iran," read the embassy's post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Ronaldo was "very well received by the people and the authorities" while he was in Iran from September 18 to September 19 for a soccer match, the embassy wrote.
"His sincere and humane meeting with Fatemeh Hamami was also praised and admired by both the people and the country's sports authorities," the post added.
According to an investigation by Australia's ABC News, which aired on October 30, the false claim originated from an Instagram post by an Iranian lawyer named Ali Gandomi.
Iran has been ruled by a theocratic government since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Under Iranian law, unmarried men and women can be punished with 100 lashes if they commit adultery. Married offenders can be given the death penalty.
Representatives for Iran's foreign ministry, Ronaldo, and Gandomi did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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