The circumstances of Mahsa Amini’s death on Friday are hotly contested, but her family has denied official reports that she suffered from epilepsy and instead claimed she was beaten by police. She was visiting Tehran with her brother when she was picked up by police outside a metro station and put into a truck for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab regulations. The dispute is now widening into one not only over the enforcement of the hijab in cities, but also over the accountability of the morality police, as well as distrust of government denials of wrongdoing. The gruesome death, front page news in some Iranian newspapers, creates a difficult backdrop for President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to New York for the UN general assembly. His visit was already facing protests from human rights activists and Republicans opposed to Joe Biden taking any steps to reopen the Iran nuclear deal. Raisi asked for a report on Amini’s death. Protesters first gathered outside Kasra Hospital in Tehran, where Amini died after collapsing in the detention center. Her body was then flown to Saqqez, in her home province of Kurdistan in northwestern Iran, for an emotional burial, which took place on Saturday. Police tried to keep the number of people attending the funeral to a minimum, but 1,000 were reported to be at the grave. Protests then gathered outside Governor Saqqez’s office, where the violence took place. Kurdish human rights groups said security forces used pepper spray against protesters, injuring more than 30. There were also peaceful protests on Sunday at Tehran University’s fine arts school, where a group of 100 students risked punishment and carried placards reading “women, life, freedom”, words also heard at her funeral. The crisis has escalated in part because of the authorities’ callous efforts to deny responsibility, releasing edited video showing her collapsing in a police station but denying she was beaten. She claimed to the Home Office that she collapsed due to a heart condition, but photographs of her face in hospital showed discoloration around her ears that appeared to be consistent with physical abuse. Amini’s father told Ham-Mihan newspaper: “She had no epilepsy, no heart disease. The worst illness he had was a cold. The video they showed from the detention center was also edited. Why didn’t they show the footage when they took my daughter out of the van? Why didn’t they show what happened in the corridors of the detention center? It was psychologically stressful for her and it is the police who are responsible for this disaster.” The family has formally requested that the full CCTV footage be released instead of the partial footage that has emerged so far. The hospital said Amini was brain dead when she got there. “The patient was resuscitated, the heartbeat returned and the patient was admitted to the intensive care unit. Unfortunately, after 48 hours on Friday, the patient went into cardiac arrest again, due to brain death. Despite the efforts of the medical team, they were unable to revive her and the patient died,” they said in a statement that was deleted from the hospital’s Instagram account an hour later. In an official sign of government concern over the incident and the public response, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said an investigation was underway but insisted Amini had a history of medical problems dating back to the age of five. Ensieh Khazali, vice president for women in government, said on Twitter that she had spoken directly to the family and expressed her condolences and was urgently seeking clarification on the matter. Her intervention led to a storm of critical responses and reports of other incidents where women had been beaten up for not wearing the hijab. Jalil Rahimi Jahanabadi, a member of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, also asked MPs to investigate. Conservative politicians such as Ali Motahari called on medical authorities to investigate whether she had suffered a concussion, as an autopsy was carried out on her body before her funeral. Two senior clerics also criticized the police’s methods. Iranian media is now full of debate about the responsibility of the morality police and whether their violent methods merely intimidate rather than protect women. Article 638 of the Islamic penal code says it is a crime for women to appear on the streets and in public without an Islamic hijab. It is disputed whether the police have the arbitrary right to arrest citizens under this code without a warrant. Robert Maley, the US special envoy for Iran, said Amini’s death “in custody for wearing an ‘improper’ hijab is horrific” and called for those responsible for her death to be brought to justice. Amnesty International has called for an investigation into Amini’s death. “The circumstances leading to the suspicious death in custody of a 22-year-old young woman, Mahsa Amini, which include allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in custody, must be criminally investigated,” it said.
