According to police, she was arrested along with other women to receive “instructions” about dress codes. “She suddenly suffered from a heart problem […] she was taken to the hospital immediately.”
Tehran police confirmed her death and said “there was no physical contact” between officers and the young woman. State television broadcast clips of a video showing a room visible at the police station where many women can be seen. One of them, introduced as Mahsa Amini, gets up to argue with an “instructor” about her clothes, then collapses.
“Unforgivable”
“The circumstances leading to the suspected death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in custody, including allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, deserve a criminal investigation,” along with the NGO Amnesty International. “The so-called morality police in Tehran arbitrarily arrested her three days before her death, using the country’s abusive, discriminatory and degrading headscarf laws.”
The United States has classified this death as “unforgivable.” “We will continue to hold Iranian leaders accountable for such human rights abuses,” wrote Jake Sullivan, US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, on Twitter.
Iranian lawyer Said Dehghan tweeted that the young woman’s death was a “murder” and said she was hit in the head, resulting in a fractured skull. Hadi Ghaemi, director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, described a “tragedy that could have been avoided”. “The government of Iran is responsible. She was arrested under the state’s discriminatory headscarf law and died in a state detention center.
Before announcing the death, the Iranian presidency had indicated that President Ebrahim Raisi had tasked the interior minister with investigating the affair.
Controversial Morality Police
The incident prompts controversy over the behavior of the moral police, who patrol the streets to check on the application of the headscarf law and other Islamic rules in public places.
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the law has required all women, regardless of nationality or religion, to wear a veil that covers the head and neck while concealing the hair. In the last two decades, however, more and more women in Tehran and other major cities are letting strands of hair, or even more, stick out of their veils.