religion
Iran’s Interior Minister: Police not to blame for Amini’s death
Demonstrators chant slogans against the death of 22-year-old Iranian Mahsa Amini during a protest in downtown Tehran. She was arrested by the vice squad a week ago because of her “un-Islamic outfit”. photo
© Uncredited/AP/dpa
The death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the vice squad is driving people into the streets of Tehran. The Interior Ministry now denies police violence. The father of the 22-year-old is outraged.
According to the Iranian interior minister, the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was not caused by the police. “The medical examinations and those of the forensic medicine show that there were neither beatings (by the police) nor a fractured skull,” Minister Ahmad Wahidi said, according to the Irna news agency on Saturday. The hasty conclusions in this case and the subsequent protests were therefore based on false interpretations, according to the minister.
Amini was arrested by the vice squad in the capital, Tehran, a little over a week ago for not wearing her headscarf properly according to Islamic regulations and revealing a few strands of hair. At the police station, she fainted and later entered a coma. On September 16, she died in a Tehran hospital.
Police claim Amini went into a coma and died from a heart defect. But critics say she was beaten by the vice squad and died of a brain hemorrhage. This version is vehemently disputed by the police, but led to violent protests across the country directed against the entire Islamic system and its regulations.
Amini’s father vehemently criticized the coroner’s report. His daughter had no heart problems and therefore could not have died of heart failure.
IRNA news agency, Persian