Iranian couple handed prison sentence for dancing in the streets - CNN

CNN  — 

An Iranian couple, some societal media influencers, person been fixed lengthy situation sentences aft a video emerged of them dancing successful a main quadrate successful the superior Tehran.

In a video shared wide connected societal media, Astiyazh Haghighi, 21, is seen dancing without a headscarf with her fiancé Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, 22, successful Azadi Square. The mates posted the video themselves.

Each was charged with “spreading corruption and vice,” and “assembly and collusion with the volition of disrupting nationalist security,” receiving sentences of 10 and a fractional years, according to activistic radical Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).

However Mizan, a quality bureau affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, said each idiosyncratic was sentenced to 5-year situation word connected the charges of “assembly and collusion with the volition of disrupting nationalist security.”

The 2 are accused of encouraging radical to assemble and inviting them to riot successful an Instagram station made connected October 26, Mizan Online besides said.

Judge Abolqasem Salavati presided implicit their lawsuit and meted retired the sentences, on with a prohibition connected posting videos connected societal media for 2 years and a prohibition connected leaving the state for 2 years, according to HRANA.

Security forces archetypal raided the couple’s location successful the aboriginal greeting hours of October 30, a root told CNN, and took them to interrogation and past aboriginal transferred them to prison.

Haghighi was initially sent to Evin prison’s Ward 209 but past transferred to Qarchak women’s situation wherever she is presently detained, HRANA reports. Both Haghighi and her spouse are being denied entree to a lawyer, it added.

Haghighi and Ahmadi each has adjacent to a cardinal followers connected Instagram and besides person abstracted YouTube channels with a full of much than fractional a cardinal followers.

This comes aft the state has been roiled successful nationwide protests implicit the decease successful custody of Mahsa Amini, a young pistillate accused of flouting the country’s compulsory hijab laws. Iran has cracked down by executing protesters, accused of sidesplitting information forces, which critics accidental were the effect of hasty sham trials.

Their lengthy sentences person been compared by critics to that of Sajjad Heydari, an Iranian antheral who notoriously beheaded his woman past year. Heydari, who killed his 17-year-old woman successful February 2022, was sentenced to conscionable 8 years and 2 months successful prison, according to the country’s semi-official Khabar Online website.