Iran: Couple jailed for greater than 10 years over viral dance video | World News
An Iranian court docket has handed jail sentences of over 10 years every to a younger couple who danced in entrance of one in all Tehran’s principal landmarks in a video seen as an emblem of defiance towards the regime, activists stated on Tuesday.
Astiyazh Haghighi and her fiance Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, each of their early 20s, had been arrested in early November after a video went viral of them dancing romantically in entrance of the Azadi Tower in Tehran.
Haghighi didn’t put on a scarf in defiance of the Islamic republic’s strict guidelines for ladies, whereas ladies are additionally not allowed to bop in public in Iran, not to mention with a person.
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A revolutionary court docket in Tehran sentenced them every to 10 years and 6 months in jail, in addition to bans on utilizing the Web and leaving Iran, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Company (HRANA) stated.
The couple, who already had a following in Tehran as fashionable Instagram bloggers, have been convicted of “encouraging corruption and public prostitution” in addition to “gathering with the intention of disrupting nationwide safety”, it added.
HRANA cited sources near their households as saying that they had been disadvantaged of legal professionals through the court docket proceedings whereas makes an attempt to safe their launch on bail have been rejected.
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It stated Haghighi is now within the infamous Qarchak jail for ladies outdoors Tehran, whose circumstances are usually condemned by activists.
Iranian authorities have clamped down severely on all types of dissent for the reason that dying in September of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the scarf guidelines, sparked protests which have was a motion towards the regime.
Not less than 14,000 folks have been arrested, in response to the United Nations, starting from outstanding celebrities, journalists and legal professionals to extraordinary individuals who took to the streets.
The couple’s video had been hailed as an emblem of the freedoms demanded by the protest motion, with Ahmadi at one second lifting his companion within the air as her lengthy hair flowed behind.
One of many principal icons of the Iranian capital, the big and futuristic Azadi (Freedom) Tower is a spot of big sensitivity.
It opened underneath the rule of the final shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi within the early Nineteen Seventies when it was often called the Shahyad (In Reminiscence of the Shah) Tower.
It was renamed after the shah was ousted in 1979 with the creation of the Islamic republic. Its architect, a member of the Bahai religion which isn’t recognised in right now’s Iran, now lives in exile.
