Iran, football players arrested for celebrating New Year’s Eve with alcohol and women – Corriere.it

They were celebrating the arrival of the new year and toasting with alcohol. A group of Iranian footballers was arrested overnight in Damavand, a few kilometers from the country’s capital Tehran, as reported by the local Tasnim news agency. The names of the players or the teams they play for have not been disclosed, but according to the agency’s reconstruction they are players from a well-known team in the capital (the strongest and most titled are Esteghlal and Persepolis). A “mixed party” was going on in the apartment (there were also some women) and the police would have intervened after a report from some neighbors. The agency also adds that “some of these were in an abnormal state due to alcohol consumption”.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, in Iran it is forbidden to participate in mixed parties, with men and women, and to drink alcohol, so much so that for the local judiciary the nocturnal parties are to be understood as an example of “social abnormality and corruption”. There had actually been much more tolerance in recent years, but the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini
(the Kurdish girl arrested by the police for morals for not wearing the hijab correctly) have tightened the controls. And even the players, after the protests at the World Cup (against England they did not sing the national anthem), were warned that they would not have any discount. Iranian law also prohibits the sale and consumption of alcohol and prohibits dancing with the opposite sex.