(Tehran) Iranian security forces on Saturday dispersed with tear gas a demonstration in the northwest of the country after the death of a young woman arrested in Tehran by morality police, local media reported.
Posted at 11:01 a.m.
Mahsa Amini, 22, was arrested on Tuesday by the police unit responsible for enforcing the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women, including the compulsory wearing of headscarves in public. State television announced Friday his death after three days in a coma.
She was buried in her hometown of Saghez in Kurdistan province on Saturday, according to the Fars news agency.
After his funeral, people “sentenced slogans demanding detailed investigations into this case”, according to the same source. The “protesters then gathered in front of the governor’s office” chanting “other slogans” before being “dispersed by the security forces who fired tear gas”.
State television broadcast on Friday excerpts from a video showing a room, visibly 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 dress code, then she collapses. In another excerpt, the emergency service transports the woman’s body to an ambulance.
Tehran police confirmed the death on Friday, saying “there was no physical contact” between police officers and the young woman.
The Iranian presidency had indicated for its part that President Ebrahim Raisi had instructed the Minister of the Interior to investigate this affair.
The head of Tehran’s medical examiner’s office told state television on Saturday that investigations into the young woman’s cause of death were underway but would take three weeks.
Mahsa Amini’s death comes as controversy swells over the conduct of vice police who patrol public places to check compliance with the headscarf law and other Islamic rules.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the law requires all women to wear a veil covering the head and neck while concealing the hair.
However, over the past two decades, more and more women in Tehran and other major cities are letting strands of hair, or even more, stick out of their veils.