crime
Iranian secret service with report on poisoning wave
Demonstrators protest in Barcelona with posters and flags against a suspected wave of poisoning in schools in Iran. photo
© Marc Asensio Clupes/ZUMA/dpa
Mysterious cases of poisoning at girls’ schools in Iran have been causing unrest for months. Families stopped letting their children go to school out of concern. Now the secret service is presenting a report.
After the mysterious wave of poisoning in Iran, the secret service published a final report. State media reported this on Friday around five months after the first reports.
The incidents have been causing unrest in the country for months. Schools for girls are almost exclusively affected. Schoolgirls were being treated in hospitals across the country. Doctors speak of gas poisoning. The authorities officially recorded thousands of suspected cases. In the meantime, parents did not let their children go to school out of concern.
The human rights organization Amnesty International recently called for more clarification. “The poisoning appears to be a coordinated campaign to punish schoolgirls for their peaceful participation in nationwide protests,” it said in a statement. The human rights activists demanded that girls have equal and safe access to education.
Tehran: Organized network of perpetrators
In the report, the Iranian secret service now explains that it is not an organized network of perpetrators. Instead of toxic substances, only traces of pepper spray or stink bombs were found after analyzing samples. The secret service argues that the cases are much more a nationwide mass hysteria. The declarations cannot be verified independently.
The intelligence service also accused Iran’s enemies of the country, most notably the United States and Israel, of having played a role in the cases in order to trigger further protests in the country and to put pressure on the state leadership. In this context, some people were arrested or warned. The report did not give exact numbers. The students were often released from the clinics after just a few hours, it said.
Iranian authorities are accused of failure
The report is likely to be met with great skepticism in Iran. Parents and other relatives accused the authorities of failure after the mysterious cases. Protests after the death of the Iranian Kurd Jina Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered the worst political crisis in decades in Tehran last fall. Critics describe the poisoning as revenge for the demonstrations.
The hesitant handling of the cases by the authorities in Iran also caused criticism. It took months for the government to comment on the mysterious poisoning. According to critics, the media, families and those affected were pressured not to speak about the cases.