TEHRAN, Iran -- An Internet video of six young Iranian men and women dancing to Pharrell Williams' song "Happy" has led to their arrests.
It was later announced that the six, all younger than 25, were released on bond Wednesday.
It was unclear precisely what charges the six faced. But Iranwire, a news service run by expatriate Iranian journalists that was among the first to report the weekend arrests, said Wednesday that their families had each been ordered to pay bond of at least 30 million toman -- the equivalent of more than $10,000 -- and that the six were likely to be summoned to court later.
Iranwire also reported the six had not been allowed to use the bathroom on their first day in custody, were placed in solitary confinement on the second day and were extensively interrogated about their comments to the foreign news media.
Earlier, Williams tweeted: "It's beyond sad these kids were arrested for trying to spread happiness."
And a tweet posted Wednesday evening on President Hassan Rouhani's account seemed to address the controversy, although it stopped short of mentioning the video or the arrests directly.
"#Happiness is our people's right," it said. "We shouldn't be too hard on behaviors caused by joy."
The widely followed account appears to reflect Rouhani's positions. Iranian media in the past quoted Rouhani as saying the account is authentic. At the same time, a senior Rouhani adviser said last year that the president had such an account only during the presidential campaign and that Rouhani's views are represented by his official website.
Hard-liners are increasingly challenging Rouhani as the country negotiates a nuclear deal with world powers. The president campaigned for greater cultural and social freedoms in his bid to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year.
As recently as Saturday, he articulated a moderate stance about the Internet, which remains tightly regulated by Iranian authorities.
Sites such as YouTube and Facebook are blocked by censors, though many young and Web-savvy Iranians use proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass the controls.
"We should see the cyberworld as an opportunity," said Rouhani, according to the official IRNA news agency. "Why are we so shaky? Why don't we trust our youth?"
Hard-liners accuse Rouhani of failing to stop the spread of what they deem "decadent" Western culture in Iran. Last week, hard-liners marched to protest women not wearing hijabs, a Muslim head covering, and dressing "provocatively."
Fans have posted similar videos from around the world, showing people dancing down streets and smiling in choreographed crowds.
But in Iran, some see the trend as promoting the spread of Western culture, as laws in the Islamic Republic ban women from dancing in public or appearing outside without covering their hair with the hijab.
The video in question shows the Iranians hamming it up for the camera in sunglasses and silly clothes on Tehran rooftops and alleyways. One of the bearded men goofily dips his female dancing partner.
None of the three women in the video wears a hijab.
The video was posted online several weeks ago and received more than 165,000 hits. It includes the participants' first names in a credit roll with outtakes.
Tehran Police Chief Hossein Sajedinia confirmed the arrests on state TV late Tuesday in a report that blurred images from the video and then showed the six with their backs turned toward the camera.
"They were identified and arrested within six hours," Sajedinia said.
In the TV broadcast, those arrested said they had been deceived and that the video was not meant to be posted on the Internet.
"They had told us that this video won't be released anywhere and that it was for our own joy," one of the women said.
Another detainee said: "They invited us to appear on the video to practice acting."
Information for this article was contributed by Rick Gladstone of The New York Times.
A Section on 05/22/2014