Iranian Jailed Two Years For Posting Photo Without Headscarf

A US-based human rights network, HRANA, reported on Friday that an Iranian shop owner has been sentenced to two years in prison for posting pictures without a headscarf.

Naija News reports that Zeinab Khenyab was earlier found guilty in December of “propaganda against the state” in another instance, the network claims, and she received a three-month prison sentence.

The woman from southwest Iran gained notoriety after the authorities ordered the closure of her shop, sparking widespread demonstrations.

When announcing the punishment, Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, who refused to disclose the woman’s identity stated that she planned to file an appeal, according to the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency.

Dolatabadi argued that the unidentified woman removed her headscarf to “encourage corruption through the removal of the hijab in public” on Enghelab Street in Tehran.

The woman will be eligible for parole in three months, but Dolatabadi declared he will fight for the full two-year sentence.

Since the end of December, more than thirty Iranian women have been taken into custody for openly removing their veils in violation of the nation’s Islamic law.

Although several are facing legal action, others have been freed.

Iranian women who display their hair in public are normally handed two months sentences or less and fined $25.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iranian law has required all women, whether they are Iranian or not, Muslims or not, to always wear complete head coverings when they are in public.