Iranian couple jailed for dancing in social media video

An Iranian couple, each social media influencers, have been given prolonged jail sentences after a video emerged of them dancing in a principal sq. within the capital Tehran.

In a video shared broadly on social media, Astiyazh Haghighi, 21, is seen dancing and not using a scarf together with her fiancé Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, 22, in Azadi Square. The couple posted the video themselves.

Each was charged with “spreading corruption and vice,” and “assembly and collusion with the intention of disrupting national security,” receiving sentences of ten and a half years, in line with activist group Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).

An Iranian couple has been jailed for dancing in a social media video. (Instagram)

However Mizan, a news company affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, stated every particular person was sentenced to five-year jail time period on the costs of “assembly and collusion with the intention of disrupting national security”.

The two are accused of encouraging folks to assemble and alluring them to riot in an Instagram put up made on October 26, Mizan Online additionally stated.

Judge Abolqasem Salavati presided over their case and meted out the sentences, together with a ban on posting movies on social media for 2 years and a ban on leaving the nation for 2 years, in line with HRANA.

Security forces first raided the couple’s house within the early morning hours of October 30, a supply instructed CNN, and took them to interrogation after which later transferred them to jail.

Haghighi was initially despatched to Evin jail’s Ward 209 however then transferred to Qarchak ladies’s jail the place she is at the moment detained, HRANA experiences. Both Haghighi and her accomplice are being denied entry to a lawyer, it added.

Haghighi and Ahmadi every has near one million followers on Instagram and still have separate YouTube channels with a complete of greater than half one million followers.

This comes after the nation has been roiled in nationwide protests over the loss of life in custody of Mahsa Amini, a younger girl accused of flouting the nation’s obligatory hijab legal guidelines. Iran has cracked down by executing protesters, accused of killing safety forces, which critics say had been the results of hasty sham trials.

Their prolonged sentences have been in contrast by critics to that of Sajjad Heydari, an Iranian man who notoriously beheaded his spouse final 12 months. Heydari, who killed his 17-year-old spouse in February 2022, was sentenced to simply eight years and two months in jail, in line with the nation’s semi-official Khabar Online web site.