The Iranian regime’s repression continues unabated. A court has sentenced a young couple to more than 10 years in prison for dancing outside one of Tehran’s main landmarks in a video seen as a symbol of defiance of the regime, Iranian human rights activists said on Tuesday.
Astiyazh Haghighi and her fiancé Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, both in their twenties, were arrested in November after a video of them dancing romantically in front of the Azadi Tower in Tehran went viral. Astiyazh Haghighi did not wear an Islamic veil, defying the Islamic Republic’s strict rules regarding women, who are also not allowed to dance in public in Iran, let alone with a man.
A revolutionary court in Tehran sentenced them to 10.5 years in prison, as well as being banned from using the internet and from leaving Iran, the United States-based NGO Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported. United States. Popular on Instagram, the couple were found guilty of “encouraging corruption and public prostitution”, as well as “gathering with intent to disrupt national security”, added the NGO.