Six Iranians arrested for appearing in a video singing along to an American pop song were released on Wednesday, one day after being detained for what police called their “obscene” behaviour, one of them said in an online posting.

In the clip, the three women and three men dance and lip synch to Pharrell Williams’s Happy, imitating the official video of the international hit. The women are not wearing headscarves, as demanded by Iran’s Islamic law.

Their arrest caused outrage among fans of the song – a catchy anthem about feeling happy – who took to social media to denounce what they saw as a heavy-handed response by the Islamic Republic to a piece of harmless fun.

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