Court finds Iran's most famous dancer guilty of promoting corruption among youths

Mon Jul 8, 7:58 AM ET

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran - A Tehran court has sentenced the country's best-known male dancer to a 10-year suspended jail term for promoting corruption among young people by setting up dance classes in the United States, his lawyer said Monday.

The sentence, handed down Sunday, bans Mohammad Khordadian, an Iranian-American, from leaving Iran for 10 years, giving dance classes for life and attending public celebrations or wedding ceremonies of people who are not close relatives for three years, lawyer Abdolrahman Rasouli said.

"Khordadian is innocent. He has done nothing wrong to deserve punishment. The whole verdict is irrelevant," Rasouli told The Associated Press.

Khordadian could not be reached for comment.

The dancer was jailed in May during a visit to Iran, his first in two decades.

He was released from Tehran's Evin prison late Sunday. The 10-year suspended jail term will be enforced if he is again found guilty by the court.

Rasouli said the dancer will appeal the verdict. He has 20 days to do so.

Khordadian told the court during the trial that "dancing is my job and I had no intention of promoting corruption among the youth," the lawyer said.

Rasouli also said the court's verdict banning Khordadian from leaving Iran was intended to "keep him away from an atmosphere that may provoke him to repeat his offenses."

Khordadian was traveling on an American passport and obtained his visa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before traveling to Iran to visit his ailing father and relatives, Rasouli said.

Khordadian's dance programs are widely watched by Iranian expatriates and many inside Iran on Los Angeles-based, Persian-language satellite television channels.

The court verdict against Khordadian coincides with a new crackdown on what Iranian officials call "acts of social immorality." Young Iranians driving around with loud music blaring out of their car radios have been charged under the social immorality rules.

The reformists have protested that "acts of social immorality" has not been clearly defined.

"Social virtues and discipline will never be established by the use of police force," the pro-reform daily Aftab-e-Yazd said last week.

"Citizens complain of arbitrary police action. Many citizens say they have been arrested and body-searched without doing anything wrong and others complain of insulting police behavior," the daily said.

Sweeping social restrictions imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution have been gradually eased since the election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami ( news - web sites) in May 1997. But women must still wear headscarves and the mingling of unrelated men and women is frowned upon.

Meanwhile, the hard-line judiciary banned Hashem Aghajari , a leading reformist scholar, from leaving the country, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Monday. The report came two days after Aghajari failed to appear in court on charges of insulting Islamic sanctities in a speech he gave last month.

IRNA did not give a reason for the ban or say when it was issued.

In an unrelated case, an appeals court has upheld an 11-year jail term sentence against veteran journalist Siamak Pourzand, the government-owned daily Iran reported Sunday. The paper gave no further details.

Pourzand, 73, is a free-lance writer who was convicted in a closed-door trial earlier this year of "taking action against national security."

After losing control of parliament in February 2000 legislative elections, hard-line followers of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have tried to protect their eroding power by thwarting Khatami's growing reform movement.

Hard-liners, through their control over unelected institutions such as the judiciary and police, have closed down pro-democracy publications and jailed or harassed scores of prominent reformist journalists and activists.