The six Iranians arrested for appearing in a YouTube video dancing to Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’ have been sentenced to up to one year in prison and 91 lashes.

Three men and three women, who are not wearing the veil, appear in the video, titled ‘Happy We Are In Tehran’, which you can watch below. It has had over one million views on YouTube in the six months since it was posted.

In May, members of the group appearing in the video were arrested by Iranian police for violating Islamic laws, which prohibit women appearing in public without wearing a headscarf and dancing with members of the opposite sex. They later appeared on state-run TV programme saying that they had been tricked into making the video as part of an audition.


According to BBC News, lawyer Farshid Rofugaran said that the majority of people involved in the video were sentenced to six months in prison, with one member of the group given one year. The sentences were suspended for three years, meaning that they will not go to prison unless they reoffend.

The arrests were strongly condemned at the time by human rights groups. Pharrell Williams reacted to the news of the arrests on Facebook saying “it is beyond sad that these kids were arrested for trying to spread happiness.”