No, Cristiano Ronaldo was not sentenced to 99 lashes for hugging a painter in Iran
A video featuring Cristiano Ronaldo hugging a wheelchair-bound woman, whose name, according to a post sharing this video, is Fatimah Hamami, is circulating on social media. It is being claimed that Cristiano Ronaldo was sentenced to 99 lashes in Iran for hugging the unmarried woman Fatimah Hamami, whom he met in Iran. Let’s understand the facts behind this claim through this article.
Claim: Cristiano Ronaldo was sentenced to 99 lashes by the Iranian government for hugging an unmarried woman, Fatimah Hamami.
Fact: The Iranian embassy in Spain denied this claim, labelling it as unfounded news. Hence, the claim made in the post is false.
To learn more about the viral video, we performed a keyword search on the internet, leading us to news reports on this incident (here, here, and here).
In September 2023, Cristiano Ronaldo reportedly met the artist Fatimah Hamami, his huge fan in Tehran. “Hamami gave Ronaldo two portraits that she had made of him. In return, the footballer gave her a No.7 Al-Nassr T-shirt that he had signed.” The Indian Express reported.
Fatimah Hamami posted a video of this interaction with Ronaldo on her Instagram, which is the same video that is now going viral with the claim that he was sentenced to 99 lashes for hugging her.
A further search on the internet revealed that the Iranian embassy in Spain denied this news by stating, “We strongly deny the issuance of any court ruling against any international athlete in Iran” on X (formerly Twitter).
This statement was issued after Iranian news outlets reported that he received this punishment after meeting with the artist Fatimah Hamami.
To sum it up, Cristiano Ronaldo was not sentenced to 99 lashes for hugging an unmarried woman in Iran.