Iranian woman sentenced to two years in jail for removing headscarf

An Iranian woman who removed her veil in public as a protest against the compulsory headscarf law has been sentenced to two years in jail.

Her identity was not revealed but she was among a number of women who removed their headscaves in public during and after popular anti-government protests in Iran late December.

She was given the 24 months jail sentence with three months without parole, the judiciary said Wednesday.

Tehran's chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabad said she intended to appeal the verdict, the judiciary's Mizan Online news agency reported.

The woman "encouraged moral corruption" in public, he said, criticising the light nature of the sentence and saying he would push for the full two-year penalty.

More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested since the end of December for publically removing their veils in defiance of the law.

Most have been released, but many are being prosecuted.

All women in Iran - whether Iranian or foreign, Muslim or non-Muslim - must be fully veiled in public at all times. The 1979 Islamic Revolution saw a raft of conservative laws introduced.

A growing number Iranian women in Tehran and other large cities often wear loose veils that reveal their hair, while some women drive with their veils lowered to their shoulders.

Dolatabadi said he would no longer accept such behaviour, and had ordered the impound of vehicles driven by any transgressors.

The prosecutor said some "tolerance" was possible when it came to women who wear the veil loosely, "but we must act with force against people who deliberately question the rules on the Islamic veil".