Parkour athlete arrested in Iran for ‘vulgar’ acts after posting pictures of him kissing woman on rooftop
Iran police on Wednesday, May 20, said that they have arrested a parkour athlete for committing ‘vulgar’ acts after he posted pictures and videos of him kissing a woman on Tehran's rooftops. Though the police have not revealed the name of the person whom they arrested, reports stated that the man is believed to be Alireza Japalaghy, a Tehran-based parkour athlete with 140k followers on Instagram.
Tehran’s police chief Hossein Rahimi told ISNA news agency: “This individual has been arrested by Tehran's cyber police. We are against this individual and his companion's norm-breaking and vulgar behavior and the police and the judiciary will certainly deal with them.” Chief Rahimi also added that the woman in the social media post with Japalaghy “will also be arrested soon”.
According to reports, Japalaghy had shared a number of photos and videos last week on the social media platform where he was seen with an unidentified woman in sportswear hanging off buildings and kissing. In Iran, the Middle East country, these kinds of acts are considered inappropriate. Also, under the Islamic dress code, women cannot wear revealing clothes. They are supposed to wear modest colors and can only show their face, hands, and feet in public.
The news of the 28-year-old’s arrest comes soon after Japalaghy an Instagram video on Monday, May 18, shared that he had received “suspicious calls” telling him to surrender him to the police or be arrested publicly. The next day, on May 19, posted an update on the same account, claiming Japalaghy had been taken from their home and arrested.
Parkour is said to have born in France in the 1990s that combines the efficiency of movement across the urban landscape with death-defying leaps. People in the neighborhoods of West Tehran, where high-rise residential buildings are closely connected, also follow this extreme sport.
Reports claimed that Japalaghy started following the sport when his father, an ex-policeman, disappeared during his retirement and never came back. The young man has earlier told his fans that it was the best way to “get rid of all my emotions”. “What better way for me to get rid of all my emotions than by channeling them through my career, doing all of this parkour? Free-running stunts and doing things that no one can even dream of lets me channel all of my misery. We started a file in court. The search and inspections began but nobody could tell us what happened to him even a minute after he was gone. He has faded from existence. You can't even imagine the aftermath and mental pressure me and my family went through due to my father's disappearance.”
In one of his videos, Japalaghy was seen doing backflipping on to the top of a multi-story car park before relying on one of his colleagues, using his arm as a pivot to swing himself onto the solid ground from a massive height. While in another video, he was seen running at the edge of a high-rise building before jumping from it to the other.