(Paris) A young Iranian woman, Armita Garawand, whose fate moved Iran after she fell into a coma in controversial circumstances in the Tehran metro, died on Saturday, according to local media.
“Armita Garawand, a student residing in Tehran, died after intensive medical treatment and 28 days of hospitalization in the special care unit,” announced the Borna agency, affiliated with the Ministry of Youth and Sports, in start of the day.
Aged 17 and originally from a Kurdish region, the teenager had been treated at Fajr hospital in Tehran since 1er October after fainting in the capital’s metro. She was declared “brain dead” a week ago.
PHOTOMONTAGE TAKEN FROM THE AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL SITE
Armita Garawand
The circumstances of his illness are controversial. Widely shared on social networks, a video from metro surveillance services showed the young girl, who was not wearing a veil, being evacuated after fainting in the carriage.
This case came as the authorities remain on alert a little more than a year after the death in detention, on September 16, 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested by the moral police for allegedly violating the strict dress rules imposed on women in Iran. This death triggered a vast protest movement in the country which left several hundred dead, including law enforcement officers, and led to the arrest of thousands of people.
According to a source from the Iranian diaspora in contact with relatives of the family, the young woman’s remains are still at the Fajr military hospital in Tehran, and the area is cordoned off by security forces.
Conflicting versions
The authorities claim that Armita Garawand was the victim of a “loss of tension” and deny any “verbal or physical altercation” between her “and passengers or metro executives”.
On Saturday, the Tasnim agency cited the “official opinion of doctors” according to which the girl had “suffered a fall leading to brain damage, followed by continuous convulsions, decreased cerebral oxygenation and edema brain, after a sudden drop in blood pressure.
But according to NGOs, the high school student was seriously injured during an “attack” on the part of members of the moral police, responsible for enforcing the obligation for Iranian women to wear the veil in public.
The daily reformist Ham Mihan called on the authorities to “allow independent media to investigate” this matter in order to “convince public opinion”.
MP Ahmad Alirezabeigui said on Wednesday that Parliament “must intervene” and “question the Minister of the Interior” about the incident, deeming the matter “important”.
“Since day one, the authorities have tried to hide the truth by transferring Armita to a military hospital, arresting journalists who covered the story, and exerting intense pressure on his family,” wrote the Iran Human Rights organization on Saturday. (IHR), based in Norway, on the X network.
Iranian Supreme Leader “Ali Khamenei is personally responsible for the death of Armita Garawand until an independent international investigation proves otherwise,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, quoted on X.
For his part, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on October 8 that the authorities had “investigated the incident” and that “the situation was completely clear.” “The enemies do not want the country to be calm and they always try to make every incident a controversy,” he denounced.