Iranian couple handed jail sentence for dancing within the streets

CNN
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An Iranian couple, each social media influencers, have been given prolonged jail sentences after a video emerged of them dancing in a most important sq. within the capital Tehran.
In a video shared broadly on social media, Astiyazh Haghighi, 21, is seen dancing with no scarf together with her fiancé Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, 22, in Azadi Sq.. The couple posted the video themselves.
Every was charged with “spreading corruption and vice,” and “meeting and collusion with the intention of disrupting nationwide safety,” receiving sentences of ten and a half years, in response to activist group Human Rights Activists Information Company (HRANA).
Nevertheless Mizan, a information company affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, mentioned every particular person was sentenced to 5-year jail time period on the costs of “meeting and collusion with the intention of disrupting nationwide safety.”
The 2 are accused of encouraging folks to assemble and welcoming them to riot in an Instagram put up made on October 26, Mizan On-line additionally mentioned.
Decide 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 response to HRANA.
Safety forces first raided the couple’s residence within the early morning hours of October 30, a supply advised 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 girls’s jail the place she is at the moment detained, HRANA reviews. Each Haghighi and her companion are being denied entry to a lawyer, it added.
Haghighi and Ahmadi every has near one million followers on Instagram and now 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 have 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 response to the nation’s semi-official Khabar On-line web site.