A loved-up Iranian couple was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for dancing in a viral video that angered the Islamic state’s ruling regime.
Astiyazh Haghighi, 21, and her fiance Amir Mohammad Ahmad, 22, were seen in the clip taking a romantic twirl in front of the Azadi Tower, one of Tehran’s main landmarks.
They were busted in early November because women are not allowed to dance in public in Iran, let alone with a man, Agence France-Presse said.
Haghighi also appeared in the video without a headscarf, in solidarity with protests over the September death of Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest for not abiding by strict hijab rules.
Haghighi and her beau were this week each sentenced to 10 1/2 years in prison by a revolutionary court in Tehran, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said.
The couple — both popular on Instagram — were convicted of “encouraging corruption and public prostitution” as well as “gathering with the intention of disrupting national security,” the court stated.
Astiyazh Haghighi and Amir Mohammad Ahmad danced with Haghighi’s hair flowing free and in defiance to rules against women dancing in public.
They were also banned from using the internet and from leaving Iran, the reports said.
Sources close to their families said they’d been deprived of lawyers during the court proceedings, AFP said.
Haghighi is reportedly in the notorious Qarchak prison for women outside Tehran, whose conditions are regularly condemned by activists, AFP said.
It was just the latest crackdown on those protesting the regime’s brutality against women that has seen at least 14,000 arrests, according to the United Nations.
In November, just a few months into the brutal crackdown of protests, Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Iran was “now in a full-fledged human rights crisis.”
The protests, using the slogan #WomanLifeFreedom, started in September when Amini died in the custody of morality police who took her in for “inappropriate attire.”
Authorities say she suffered a heart attack after being taken to a station to be “educated,” but her family said she did not have heart problems and was covered in bruises.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the unrest so far — with some protesters put to death — while thousands more have been arrested, including high-profile journalists and Iranian personalities.
The hijab became mandatory four years after the 1979 revolution established the Islamic Republic of Iran.
