Iranian authorities have arrested the mother of a 16-year-old girl who was allegedly the victim of an altercation with security forces in the Tehran subway and has been in a coma ever since, according to a human rights NGO.
• Also read – Teenage girl attacked by police: Iran castigates ‘interventionist’ Westerners
• Also read – Iran: A teenager is in a coma after an “attack”.
On Monday, Iran’s official IRNA news agency claimed the young girl fainted after a “voltage drop” in the subway on Sunday. Tehran Metro General Manager Masood Dorosti denied any “verbal or physical altercation” between the teenager “and passengers or subway executives.”
But according to the NGO for the Defense of the Rights of Iranian Kurds Hengaw, whose headquarters is in Norway, Armita Garawand was seriously injured in an “attack” by members of the morality police, who are responsible for enforcing Iranian women’s obligation to wear Islam Veil in public.
According to Hengaw, the teenager, originally from the predominantly Kurdish western city of Kermanshah but living in Tehran, is being treated at the capital’s Fajr Hospital, in a high-security ward.
His mother, Shahin Ahmadi, was arrested by security forces near the hospital and taken to an unknown location, the NGO added.
According to private television channel Iran International TV, she was arrested after protesting against restrictions on hospital visits.
The girl’s parents had previously given an interview with Iranian state media in the hospital “under considerable pressure” and “in the presence of high-ranking security officials,” Hengaw said.
Iranian authorities remain on alert, just over a year after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died in custody on September 16, 2022, arrested by moral police for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women became .
Tehran on Thursday criticized “interventionist” statements by several Western governments that expressed concern about the health of the teenager, who has been hospitalized since Sunday.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it was “unbearable” that a young woman was “fighting for her life again” not to wear the veil.
For his part, the American special envoy to Iran, Abram Paley, reiterated that Washington was “shocked and concerned by the information that the so-called Iranian moral police attacked the student.”
“Instead of making interventionist and biased remarks and expressing disingenuous concerns about Iranian women and girls, it would be better to be concerned about American, German and British health workers and patients and attack their situation,” explained on X (ex-Twitter) said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani.
On Monday, Iranian journalist Maryam Lotfi was briefly detained in Tehran after she went to a hospital to check on the girl’s condition.
The Irna agency broadcast interviews on Thursday with two teenage girls who identified themselves as Armita’s comrades and claimed that they were with her during the incident.
“She fell at the entrance of the car (…), no one pushed her and she didn’t fight with anyone,” said Fatemeh, one of the two young girls.