Tehran: A 22-year-old Iranian woman who fell into a coma shortly after being arrested for not complying with the country’s mandatory hijab rules, died on Friday, Iranian media reported.
Mahsa Amini who came to Tehran with her family from Saqqaz, was arrested on Tuesday, September 13, near the Martyr Haqqani metro station, by the morality police patrol who took her away for a guidance lesson over her improper hijab.
As per media reports, she was allegedly beaten inside the morality police’s van while being taken to a detention centre.
Mahsa’s older brother Kiarash Amini said in an interview with Iranwire that according to doctors’ diagnoses his sister suffered from a heart attack or a stroke, ‘and that while her heart was still beating, her brain is no longer conscious.’
It is not yet clear what happened between her arrival at the police station and her departure for the hospital.
According to the state-run IRNA news agency, President Ebrahim Raisi asked Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi to “investigate the cause of the incident with urgency and special attention”.
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the law required all women, regardless of nationality or religious beliefs, to wear a headscarf that covers the head and neck.
In 2017, after dozens of women publicly took off their headscarves in a wave of protests, the authorities adopted tougher measures.
Social media outrage over Mahsa’s death
The incident sparked a wave of anger on social networks, turning the hashtag #Mahsa_Amini into a trend, amid calls to end the work of morality police patrols and reject the compulsory veil and demand that those who caused the incident to be prosecuted.
Amini’s case has drawn condemnation from Iranian celebrities, athletes and other public figures.
Popular former soccer player, Ali Karimi, tweeted that while children of high-ranking officials are leaving the country, “our children are dying.”
Hossein Mahini, another former soccer player, said in a tweet, addressing the morality police, “We hate you.”
American actress Les Remini posted pictures of Mahsa Amini on her Twitter account, and wrote, “Mahsa is in a coma after being tortured by the Iranian authorities, and the fact that she was arrested for wearing an inappropriate veil makes the story even more terrible.”
Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, the leader of the reformist movement in Iran, commented on the incident on Twitter, describing it as a painful disaster, calling for not to provide a ground for discrediting Islam and the regime more than that, and to punish those responsible for these incidents appropriately.
