Warning: This is a very sad story of a nation and a people and a young woman slaughtered by thugs promoting a propaganda about “hijab.” Please know this chronology of events so that you can 1) appreciate the freedoms you enjoy (if you do) and 2) support the women and men of Iran.
People, translations and hashtags to know:
Zhina Amini, known as Mahsa — killed
Kiaresh Amini, also spelled Kiarash and known as Ashkan — brother of Mahsa
Erfan Mortezaei — Mahsa Amini's cousin
Vozara Detention Center, Tehran — Mahsa taken there in custody
Gasht-e Ershad, Iran’s “Guidance Patrol,” or “morality police” — #گشت_ارشاد
Ershad means “guidance” — Gasht means “patrol”
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC — which many Iranians want designated a terrorist organization for its brutal oppression of the citizenry
History
1979: A death sentence
1981: ‘Islamic dress codes’
In 1981, Article 18 of the Law for Rebuilding Human Resources of Government Agencies and Ministries declared that not following “Islamic dress codes” was an offense punishable by 74 lashes.
1984: New punishments
On July 26, 1984, the Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office issued a follow-up statement announcing that unveiled women, or those with “bad hijab,” were banned from entering public buildings and government offices.
1996: More penalties
In 1996, Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code added a prison sentence of 10 days to two months to the 74 lashes to the possible penalties for violating covering laws.
2005: ‘Hijab and chastity’
In 2005, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution passed a “law” – overruling the Iranian legislature – on implementing and promoting “hijab and chastity”. It was amended in 2019 and specifies in detail the duties of Iran’s 32 government agencies with regard to the compulsory hijab.
The tragedy comes after a months-long, sustained assault on women’s civic freedoms spearheaded by the government and the so-called Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
This has re-emboldened the so-called “morality patrols” that stalk major cities harassing women over their choice of clothing, as well as isolated attacks on women by vigilantes.
IranWire was founded by Maziar Bahari in 2013 and is owned by Off-Centre Productions, a U.K.-based company.
Iran’s Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Setad-PV) has published a 119-page document detailing the Islamic Republic’s hijab policy, and the rationale behind a recent government campaign to enforce the veiling of women more strictly and with a greater degree of violence.
Entitled the “Hijab and Chastity Project”, the policy was apparently sent last winter to most of Iran’s government agencies. They were ordered to implement every single one of its stipulations, which had been pre-approved by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution.
…According to Setad-PV’s proposals, the “Hijab and Chastity Project” should be rolled out in 11 types of location. They include government offices, public transport, clothes stores and schools, but also “neighborhoods” and “homes”.
"Jhina's death has opened the doors of popular anger," said Erfan Salih Mortezaee, 34, using Amini's Kurdish first name and referring to the ongoing wave of protests that her death has sparked.
In a phone call after the young woman's death was announced, Amini's mother told him what happened when her 22-year-old daughter was detained, Mortezaee said.
AFP spoke with Mortezaee in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region -- bordering Amini's native Kurdistan province in Iran -- where he has been living for a year.
There he joined Iranian Kurdish nationalist group Komala, which has conducted a long-running cross-border insurgency against the Tehran authorities, seeking autonomy for Kurdish-populated areas of northwestern Iran.
Mortezaee said that, before starting university, Amini had gone to Tehran with her parents and 17-year-old brother to visit relatives.
On September 13, Amini, her brother and female relatives went out in the capital.
On leaving the Haghani underground station, "the morality police stopped them, arresting Jhina and her relatives," Mortezaee said.
Wearing military fatigues and speaking at a Komala base in the Sulaimaniyah area of northern Iraq, Mortezaee said Amini's brother tried to tell the police that they were "in Tehran for the first time" and "did not know the (local) traditions".
Zhina Amini (Mahsa) from Saqqez came to Tehran from Sanandaj with her family for a leisure trip. She was arrested on Tuesday night at the entrance of Haqqani [Haghani] highway by the Guidance patrol forces.
Information on the highway:
Shahid Haghani Expressway (Highway) is an expressway in Tehran. It starts from Resalat Expressway and ends in Vanak Square.
About 6-6:30 p.m.: Mahsa arrested and sent for ‘reeducation’
At 6.30 she and her brother were at the entrance to the Shahid Haghani Expressway when a morality patrol van blocked their path.
Agents grabbed Mahsa and forced her inside. Her brother, Kiarash, tried to intervene but his arm was twisted behind his back. After he disentangled himself, they told him they were taking Mahsa to the station and she would be released after a one-hour “re-education class”.
The woman, Mahsa Amini, who also went by the name Jina, was detained on the streets of Tehran on Tuesday while visiting the capital with her family from the city of Saqiz in Kurdistan province, according to news reports.
…Her mother said in an interview with Iranian news media that her daughter was observing the rules and wearing a long, loose robe. She said Ms. Amini was arrested as she exited the subway with her brother, and that his pleas that they were visitors to the city were ignored.
“They have to explain for what crime, for what reason did they do this?” her mother said, adding that security forces had swarmed the hospital and ordered the family not to speak out. “I am her mother and I am dying from grief.”
On Tuesday evening, Mahsa Amini and her family, who had traveled from Iran’s Kurdistan region to visit relatives in the capital, Tehran, were stopped by a patrol of morality police – a dedicated unit that enforces strict dress codes for women, such as wearing the compulsory headscarf.
Shortly after 6pm on Tuesday, Mahsa was abducted off the street in front of her brother Kiarash by a “morality patrol” van. The family, from Saqqez, had been in the capital on a holiday.”
Vigilantes told Kiarash that his sister was being taken for “re-education” and would be released later that night. When he tried to intervene he was tear-gassed and his arms twisted behind his back.
Brigadier-General Hossein Rahimi, the head of Tehran's police, stated on Monday that the woman was detained for wearing tight pants and a headscarf incorrectly, but that reports that she was tortured were "absolutely wrong."
“Cowardly accusations have been levelled against the police, which we will defer to the day of judgement, but is it possible to shut down the society’s security?” Rahimi asked.
Before 8 p.m.: Mahsa collapsed in the detention center
State television broadcast footage without audio or a date, provided by the police from cameras inside the detention center, that showed a woman the police identified as Ms. Amini dressed in a long black robe and a large head scarf. In the video, the woman gets up from her seat, briefly speaking to a woman who works at the detention facility and grabbing her robe. The woman identified as Ms. Amini then holds her head with her hands and collapses. The video then cuts to medics arriving and carrying the woman on a stretcher to an ambulance.
Ms. Amini’s family has not confirmed if the woman in the footage is her.
A video released by Iranian state TV purported to show Amini walking into a “education” center where she would have been receiving “guidance” on proper Islamic attire, state media said.
The edited video shows CCTV footage of a woman taking a seat, then standing up to speak to an “expert” who touches her clothing, before she collapses onto the ground.
The following clip shows five men carrying her on a stretcher, apparently unconscious. An ambulance is then shown in another frame.
There’s an edit in the video at 19 seconds, after which the woman is seen standing up and speaking. Before the cut, it appears to be daylight outside. After the cut, it appears dark.
“Ms. Amini looks unwell and falls to the floor,” the state media reporter says.
Police notice: Mehsa Amini was directed to one of the police headquarters on 22 Shahrivar along with a number of people due to inappropriate clothing to get a commitment and justification, when she suddenly fainted in the company of other visitors.
Police: She was immediately taken to the nearest hospital for treatment with the cooperation of the police and emergency services, unfortunately, the treatment measures were not effective. Based on the careful investigation carried out since she was transferred to the car and also in the mentioned place, no physical treatment was done with her.
Zhina Amini (Mahsa) went into a coma after being batoned by the Guidance Patrol. The level of consciousness of this 22-year-old girl has reached 3. Doctors have given up hope on her.
Zhina Amini and her brother Kiaresh (Ashkan) were attacked and beaten by the guidance patrol on September 14, 2022, as they entered the Haqqani [Haghani] metro station in Tehran.
After beating up Zhina Amini, the Guidance patrol forces took her to downtown Tehran’s notorious Vozara detention center.
Zhina Amini suffered a concussion after a few hours in Vozara Detention Center due to severe beating and injuries. She was transferred to Tehran’s Kasra Hospital.
Around two hours later Mahsa was rushed from a detention center in Vozara Avenue to hospital. Doctors told the family she was brain dead.
Dozens of other women were being held at the same facility that night. The publication of Mahsa’s picture on the night she was killed, and of her lying unconscious in the ICU, have sparked outrage in Iran.
Her brother, Kiarash Amini, said he was waiting outside the detention center on the day of her arrest when he heard screaming from inside. An ambulance arrived and a witness coming out of the center told him security forces had killed a young woman inside, according to local news media.
Ms. Amini was taken from the detention facility by ambulance to a hospital shortly after her arrest and went into a coma there but was kept on machines, the outlets reported.
Mahsa’s brother, Kiarash, resisted his sister’s arrest, and the officers also violently treated him. He managed to free himself from the officers. They told him they would take his sister to the Moral Security Police on Vozara Avenue and release her after an hour of “education class”!
Kiarash said, “When I arrived in front of the building, about 60-70 people had brought clothes for their detained girls, waiting there. When a few young women were freed, suddenly, there was a scream. We were all banging on the building door and climbed up the door. But they did not open the door. At one point, officers came out with tear gas and batons and attacked us. My whole body is bruised. My eyes have been burning since last night. “Five minutes later, an ambulance left the building.”
Kiarash continued angrily: “Every girl who came out said, ‘Someone was killed.’ I showed Mahsa’s photo to the girls. One said Mahsa was in her arms when she had a problem. I was shocked and scared. I asked a soldier what happened. He said one of our soldiers was wounded. They lied. Mahsa was in that ambulance. I didn’t believe it. I ran to the Kasra Hospital.”
Doctors told the family ‘Mahsa could not be saved.’
At 20:17 on Tuesday, doctors told the family that Mahsa could not be saved. They said she had suffered a heart attack and a stroke, and although her heart continued to beat, her brain was no longer functioning.
“It took two hours from her arrest until when her body was taken away,” Kiarash said.
According to Kurdish human rights sources, by midnight on Wednesday, September 14, the doctors declared the condition of Zhina Amini to be very serious, and her level of consciousness was 3.
Doctors also gave up hope of improving the condition of Zhina Amini. According to their diagnosis, she had a heart attack and brain death.
Kasra Hospital is entirely under the control of police forces and intelligence agents. Zhina Amini’s parents were with their daughter in the hospital.
The intelligence service threatened the family of Zhina Amini (Mahsa) that they were not allowed to interview foreign media; otherwise, they would face problems.
1/ Warning! This video contains disturbing scenes. Short video - Mehsa Amini in Kasri hospital in Tehran. Kordpa media has published a video of #مهسا_امینی in the hospital. According to this media, Gina (Mehsa) Amini is still in a coma with a low level of consciousness.
To help her breathe, Mahsa was intubated, which means putting a tube in the trachea through the mouth. She had a tube in her nose for medication and nutrition. She was wearing blood pressure cuffs. Her face was padded to prevent the breakdown of skin from the tubes touching her face. She was receiving medication intraveneously through an IV in the vein of her right arm. She wore a hospital gown.
2/ She is hospitalized in the special care department of Kasri Hospital in Tehran under security measures. Mehsa Gina Amini, 22 years old, came to Tehran with her family from Saqqez to visit her relatives, after being arrested by #گشت_ارشاد and transferred to Ministers Detention Center, due to beatings.
A photo and video of Ms. Amini widely circulating on social media on Thursday showed her lying unconscious on a hospital bed with tubes in her mouth and nose, blood oozing from her ear, and bruises around her eyes.
Kiarash also went to the courthouse in Tehran to file a formal complaint. “I will pursue it,” he said, “but you know how the system works. They gave me a letter and told me to go to the headquarters in Vozara Avenue to register my complaint there. It’s like asking my father to name the murderer if I killed someone in our house.
“But I won’t allow this to end in silence. I will tell everyone in Iran what happened.”
Staff have allowed Kiarash in to visit the room where his sister is lying comatose. But he was stopped from taking pictures. “Mahsa’s face is swollen,” he said, “and her legs are bruised. I have nothing more to lose now. I’m being followed by police on the ground floor of this building and my sister is lying up there.”
Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022
Tehran police: 22-year-old died from ‘heart attack’
Tehran Police issued a statement on Thursday claiming Mahsa had suffered a medical problem. The force said: “A woman was led to a precinct of Greater Tehran Police for education and guidance when suddenly she suffered a heart problem while she was among others also there for guidance.
“With the cooperation of police and emergency services, this woman was immediately taken to the hospital, where she is being treated and is cared for.” The statement also claimed she had not been beaten, calling reports to this effect “the claims of hostile media.”
Iran’s security forces issued a statement claiming Ms. Amini had suddenly collapsed from a heart attack at the detention center, while receiving educational training on hijab rules. Her family disputed this claim, saying she was perfectly healthy before her arrest, according to news reports.
…Ms. Amini’s uncle told the Iranian news outlet Etemad that doctors told the family she had suffered from a stroke, but that she had been healthy before the arrest three days earlier.
On Thursday, Tehran police said that Amini had suffered a “heart attack” following her arrest on Tuesday.
“The woman was sent to a Greater Tehran police precinct for guidance and education when suddenly, in the presence of other people, she had a heart attack,” the police said.
According to an Instagram post from Kasra Hospital (which has since been deleted), Amini was brought there in a brain-dead state and in cardiac arrest. Eventually, she died on September 16 after spending three days in hospital.
The Islamic Republic announced that the cause of her death was “natural” and caused by a heart attack.
He reported:
A number of Iranian doctors diagnosed Amini's condition as a "severe concussion" based on a photo of her in hospital shared on social media.
They said that bleeding from her ear and blacked eyes were signs that she had suffered brain damage, as opposed to a heart attack or cerebral stroke as the Iranian regime claimed.
In addition, a London-based Persian-language media published some of Amini’s medical scans taken at Kasra Hospital, provided by a hacker group that had hacked into the hospital database. The scans showed a skull fracture and a confirmed concussion.
A London-based news outlet said on Monday it had obtained the skull CT scan of Mahsa Amini, adding that it showed bone fracture, haemorrhage and cerebral edema.
The skull CT scan of Mahsa Amini
It reported:
Mahsa Amini’s CT Scan Shows Skull Fractures Caused By Severe Blows
The skull CT scan of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian woman who died in religious police custody, shows bone fracture, hemorrhage and brain edema, Iran International has learned.
The medical documents and dozens of exclusive images sent to Iran International by a hacktivist group vividly show a skull fracture on the right side of her head caused by a severe trauma to the skull, which corroborate earlier accounts by her family and doctors about her being hit several times on the head, proving that the Iranian police's claim that she suffered a heart attack was untrue.
Images of her chest show bilateral diffuse alveolar hemorrhage and damage due to aspiration pneumonia, secretion retention and superimposed infection. Doctors say the results are compatible with acute respiratory distress syndrome due to brain trauma.
It continued:
A source from the hospital where she died told Iran International on Saturday that her brain tissue was crushed after "multiple blows" to the head, adding that Amini was taken to Kasra Hospital in capital Tehran while she was not responsive and brain dead.
The source added that her lungs were filled with blood when she was transferred to the hospital and it was clear that she “could not be revived."
This source emphasized that Mahsa's condition "was such that she could not be saved nor was surgery possible because her brain tissue was seriously damaged and it was clear that the patient was not injured by a single punch and must have received many blows to her head."
‘My country is orphaned’
Ali Karimi, a well-known Iranian soccer star, posted a picture of Mahsa lying in her hospital bed on his Instagram page on Thursday. “The future of Iran is a woman,” he wrote.
After news broke of Mahsa’s death the next day, he posted simply: “My country is orphaned.”
Alireza Jahanbakhsh, the current captain of Iran's national soccerl team, wrote on his Instagram page: "And our girls' hair is covered up - with a shroud."
Former captain Masoud Shojaei noted the same: “She was sacrificed for her hair."
8:36 a.m. Iran time
Actress Leah Remini said the assault on Mahsa was "unacceptable no matter what, but the fact that she was arrested for improper wearing of the hijab makes it even more horrifying."
The Iranian actress Hanieh Tavassoli, who has recently faced pressure from the security agencies herself due to speaking out about sexual abuse in Iranian cinema, said: “I am appalled… A girl, 22 years young. Crime? Bad hijab. I’m so sorry, desperate and miserable, with all my heart.”
On Thursday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also called on the judiciary to prosecute people who are circulating “false news and rumours”, in an apparent bid to take the steam out of the protests.
In a statement, the IRGC expressed sympathy for the family and relatives of Amini.
“We have requested the judiciary to identify those who spread false news and rumours on social media as well as on the street and who endanger the psychological safety of society and to deal with them decisively,” the group said.
Activists are reporting that Mahsa Amini, 22, has died after being arrested by #Iran's "anti-vice" police for her alleged improper hijab. The state’s discriminatory forced-hijab law has long been used as a means to harass, denigrate, abuse, detain and harm women. #مهسا_امینی
On Friday afternoon a crowd had begun to gather outside the hospital where Mahsa died. Videos from the scene showed a heavy police presence and scuffles between officers and individual bystanders.
Burial
Mahsa Amini is buried in her hometown of Saqqez in Kurdistan Province, 400 miles west of Tehran. Protests broke out against the Iranian regime.
A relative told IranWire on Monday that officers from the Ministry of Information had attended the family home and told them, without offering condolences, that other wellwishers from Saqqez had no right to be there.
They asked the grieving family to issue a public call, via the city’s Friday Imam, asking people to “calm down” and in so doing, restore “peace” to cities across Kurdistan.
Ahmad Mirzaei, the commander of the Tehran morality police was removed on September 19, according to Iranian media. The dismissal was a rare gesture in the Islamic Republic that followed three days of protests.
Erfan Mortezaei, Mahsa Amini's cousin, has told IranWire that Mahsa's family are still under pressure to publicly back the regime’s version of events: namely that she did not due to head injuries sustained in custody, but from complications from a historic brain surgery. So far, the family are refusing to go along with it.
In addition, he said, the Islamic Republic has tried to diminish Mahsa by claiming she was trained by Kurdish separatists outside the country. The family are also emphatic that this is a lie; Mahsa had no political affiliation and had never been abroad.
Yesterday, Wednesday, would have been Mahsa’s 23rd birthday. Six days after her death in Tehran’s Kasra Hospital, protests demanding an end to dictatorship in Iran continue in her name.
Translation: “A video published by the "1500 Images" account shows the sister of Javad Heydari, one of the victims of the nationwide uprising against the Islamic Republic, cutting her hair at his funeral in Qazvin.”
Statement of the Scientific Association of Psychiatrists of Iran addressed to Raisi: The experience of 44 years of coercion #حجاب , especially through #گشت_ارشاد , has clearly shown the failure of this policy in the development of hijab along with complications such as desecration #زنان and the weakening of the psycho-social health of the society and the increasing gap between the people and the government. . #مهسا_امینی time
OMG this is so sad AND angering. Her brother has to be sad and angry having to witness such cruelty, injustice and absolute tyranny. We forget here how great we have it and whine about ridiculous crap like proper pronouns, what a joke! Thanks Asra for pointing thst out and reminding us of that AND the fact that most of the people there are good but are being oppressed by a minority of inhumane &$”@&!! Great segments on Newsmax BTW.
OMG this is so sad AND angering. Her brother has to be sad and angry having to witness such cruelty, injustice and absolute tyranny. We forget here how great we have it and whine about ridiculous crap like proper pronouns, what a joke! Thanks Asra for pointing thst out and reminding us of that AND the fact that most of the people there are good but are being oppressed by a minority of inhumane &$”@&!! Great segments on Newsmax BTW.