The case caused a stir at the beginning of October: an Iranian schoolgirl is said to have been seriously injured during a check by the so-called moral police in the subway. Media reports that the 16-year-old has now been declared brain dead.
According to a media report, 16-year-old Iranian Armita Garawand has been declared brain dead by doctors. As the Iranian news agency Tasnim reported, despite their best efforts, doctors assumed that the young Iranian woman’s vital brain functions had completely disappeared.
Dispute over missing headscarf
The student’s case caused great outrage at the beginning of October. According to reports from human rights activists, the young woman is said to have been checked and attacked by so-called moral watchdogs for violating the requirement to wear a headscarf. She has been in a coma ever since.
State media denied violence by the moral police. Garawand fell and hit his head because of low blood pressure, the official statement said.
Garawand’s fate reminds many Iranians of the case of the young Iranian Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by moral watchdogs in the fall of 2022 because of an allegedly ill-fitting headscarf. Amini then fell into a coma and died.
Amini’s death sparked the most violent protests in the Islamic Republic in a long time. There was a nationwide wave of outrage and disbelief. The protests spread rapidly and unleashed the anger of the younger generation in particular. The uprisings plunged Iran’s political and clerical leadership into its worst crisis in decades.
Iranian journalists sentenced to long imprisonment
Two journalists who were among the first to report on the death have now been sentenced to long prison terms. A revolutionary court in Tehran sentenced Nilufar Hamedi to seven years in prison and Elaheh Mohammadi to six years in prison, the Misan justice portal reported. The verdicts can be appealed.
Both journalists were accused of collaborating with the United States and convicted of national security violations. In addition to the prison sentences, the court also imposed a two-year ban on the women from organizing in groups, being active on social media or carrying out their work as journalists.