Tehran: The Iranian authorities released a prominent human rights lawyer on Tuesday, after spending more than five months in prison over supporting recent anti-hijab protests sweeping the country.
On Monday, November 8, Mostafa Nili was detained at Tehran’s Mehrabad international airport by IRGC Intelligence.
41-year-old Nili is one of several lawyers — to have been arrested after representing people detained during nationwide protests sparked by the September 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody for allegedly wearing a head scarf improperly.
Iran protests
The death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, three days after her arrest by the morality police for violating the strict dress code in the Islamic Republic, sparked widespread protests for several months, while the security forces continued to suppress demonstrators and protesters of all groups in every way.
Since that time, the authorities have used all means of violence against the protesters in order to quell these protests, and hundreds of people have been killed, while thousands have been arrested and some executed, amid international condemnation of these continuous violations.
Statistics indicate that 161 cities across Iran have been on the scene of protests for more than three months, and a total of about 1200 protest gatherings have been organized in Iranian cities and universities.
At least 527 people have been killed in Iran since the start of the anti-government demonstrations, which spread to 160 cities outside the capital, Tehran, more than 4 months ago, according to a report by the Iranian-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
