“They killed my angel,” he said. In an interview with BBC Persian on Friday.
Police said Amini suffered a heart attack after being transferred to a police “education and counseling” center, state media reported. Her family insisted that she had no previous health problems and activists claimed that the police could have beaten her. On Friday, as scattered protests broke out in Tehran over the death, the Interior Ministry ordered an investigation, which it said was ordered by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The veil and other conservative dresses, known as hijabs, have been mandatory for women since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Raisi, a hardline cleric who took office last year, has called for strict adherence to dress codes. Guidance patrols have become increasingly assertive of late, with their distinctive green-striped vans appearing in a series of videos that have gone viral online and sparked anger, including one from last month that appeared to show a woman arrested. being thrown of a speeding van.
Other recent video shown A mother stood in front of one of the trucks while her daughter was inside, trying to stop her from moving by placing her hands on the hood.
The government crackdown sparked a protest movement over the summer by Iranian women who photographed themselves unveiled and posted the images on social media.
Amini, a Kurdish woman from western Iran, was visiting Tehran with her brother when she was arrested, her mother said. It was not clear why her outfit drew police scrutiny, but she was detained as soon as she left a Tehran metro station.
“My son begs you not to do it,” the mother said. “He says, ‘We are strangers in Tehran, we don’t know anyone, don’t take her,'” the mother said. “But they beat my son and took my daughter.”
a video taken by Iranian media On Friday he intended to show Amini at the police station. In the video, which was edited, she can be seen in a large room full of women, sitting for a moment, then approaching another woman who appears to be an authority figure and gestures towards Amini’s clothing, touching her handkerchief to the head before walking away. Amini can then be seen raising his hands to her face, shortly before collapsing into a chair.
Images of Amini in hospital, intubated, circulated widely on social media, prompting anguished reactions from activists, celebrities and reformist political figures. In a post, Asghar Farhadi, a prominent Iranian filmmaker, wrote: “We pretend to be asleep in the face of this endless oppression. We are all partners in this crime.”
Following her death, security forces clashed with people outside Tehran’s Kasra Hospital, north of the capital, where Amini was treated, according to videos posted on social media. Some videos also showed protesters near Plaza Argentina, chanting against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Khamenei is a murderer; his government is invalid, ”they chanted.
Babak Dehghanpisheh in Phoenix contributed to this report.
