Iran's top cop busted in underground brothel

Iran has arrested Tehran's chief of police, who was in charge of fighting vice, after he was caught last month with six nude women, a spokesman for the judiciary said Tuesday.

Police chief Gen. Reza Zarei, was caught in a police raid on an underground brothel and found with six naked women believed to be prostitutes, which is illegal in Iran.

His case is under investigation, spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said, refusing to elaborate.

Zarei was in charge of a program to clean cities from corruption and has arrested plenty of young men and women for illicit relationships or not respecting the Islamic dress code.

In recent weeks state media had reported that Zarei would be replaced but made no mention of his arrest or the reasons that led to his detention since such issues are considered a taboo in Iran, a country where even talking about sex is frowned upon by hard-line clerics.

Iran's strict Islamic rules allow little mixing of the sexes, and young Iranians have been jailed and lashed for socializing and dancing together at parties.

Usually Iran's hard-line clergy -- that ruled since the 1979 Islamic revolution--never admits that vices such as prostitution exist, but in the past decade, authorities have had to acknowledge that prostitution exists and is becoming more and more rampant, mainly due to economic hardships.