Tehran: Shaking hands with people of the opposite sex led to jail term and sentence of 99 lashes apiece to two Iranian poets. The poets, Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Musavi, have been sentenced to jail for “insulting the sacred” in their writings, a decision slammed by freedom of expression activists.

Ekhtesari (left) is a practicing obstetrician, and Mousavi is a trained doctor. Pic/ International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran