A girl of Kurdish origin has died in an Iranian hospital after being arrested by religious police for violating the Islamic Republic‘s strict dress code.
Twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini traveled with her family from Iranian Kurdistan to the capital Tehran, where she was arrested by the “morality police” for not wearing the hijab.
Multiple witnesses said the girl was beaten in a police van, but Iranian police dismissed the claims as baseless.
Her family was notified a few hours after the arrest that their daughter had been transferred to the hospital, in intensive care, after falling into a coma.
During the arrest, they told the family that they would return the girl after a “re-education session”, but it seems that something went wrong.
After Amini was transferred to the hospital, her family members were informed that she had suffered a heart attack, but at the hospital they were told that their daughter was in a coma and that brain death had occurred.
Iran’s president, ultraconservative Muslim cleric Ebrahim Raisi, ordered the Interior Ministry to conduct an internal investigation into the case that led to the young girl’s death.
Raisi is most responsible for her arrest because Iran’s radical president this year further tightened laws punishing violations of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s strict dress code for women.
In mid-August, he signed a decree increasing the penalties for women who break the rules, not only in public but also online. State television reported Amina’s death on Friday, repeating the official version of events.
“Unfortunately, she died and her body was transferred to the medical center,” it was said on television.
“She suddenly experienced a heart problem while she was in the company of others who were receiving instructions and with the cooperation of the emergency she was immediately transferred to the hospital.”
At the time of the “sudden heart problem”, Amini was in prison, along with other women receiving “instructions” from the religious police on how to dress and behave properly.
Amnesty International called for a criminal investigation into the circumstances of her death.
Iranian law prohibits women from showing their hair and neck in public, where they must cover themselves with a hijab.
In recent years, more and more Iranian women have rebelled against these laws by wearing their hijabs high, letting their hair fall in front, which Iranian authorities tacitly tolerated until Raisi imposed new, stricter rules.