It said the three men from Hamburg, aged between 18 and 24, came to Tehran on holiday and attempted to make what they said was a documentary film on social life in the Islamic Republic.

"We started to shoot films of every woman we made friends with from the time we met them until the time we left them," the newspaper quoted one of the men as saying.

According to Iran's strict Islamic law, social contact between unmarried members of the opposite sex is officially illegal, although enforcement of these laws has been more relaxed in the last five years.