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| Screen shot of the video, featuring women without their heads covered |
-Rick Gladstone
Six young Iranians who were arrested for posting a YouTube video of themselves dancing on Tehran rooftops to “Happy,” the globally infectious pop song, were released on bail on Wednesday as new details emerged of their possible mistreatment while incarcerated amid an outpouring of sympathy...
The arrests of the six, who were all under 25 and included women not wearing their mandatory headscarves, were carried out over the weekend. They were taken into custody just as the president, Hassan Rouhani, was giving a speech arguing that Iranians should embrace the Internet instead of viewing it as an insidious Western threat to Islamic morals.
The six were shown on state television, backs to the camera, apologizing for having made the video, which was uploaded on YouTube in April and received more than 165,000 hits. The television broadcast also included an admonition from Tehran’s police chief, Hossein Sajedi, who told all young Iranians never to make such videos.
[New York Times]
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