January 22-2016
Police last month stopped a tourist bus in Esfahan province and forbade it from continuing because it mixed male and female passengers. Tour organizer Karim Shadfar told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) the bus was stopped at Naeen at 5 a.m. while on its way to the Varzaneh Desert. The passengers were detained on the bus for six hours in sub-freezing temperatures before police arrived and said the bus could not pass through Naeen during a religious mourning period with both male and female passengers. Shadfar said 80 percent of the passengers were related to one another. He said the Naeen police had conducted similar “insulting” treatment in the past.