The Ministry of the Interior, however, did not confirm this information. State media clarified that the attorney general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, did not oversee the police force.
Senior Iranian officials have repeatedly said Tehran will not change its dress policy for women, which mandates the wearing of the veil, despite 11 weeks of protests.
The announcement, seen as a gesture towards protesters, came after authorities decided on Saturday to revise a 1983 law on compulsory veiling in Iran, imposed four years after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
It was the morality police who arrested Mahsa Amini on September 13a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, in Tehran accusing her of not respecting the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code, which requires women to wear the veil in public.
His death was announced three days later. Activists and her family say Mahsa Amini died after being beaten, but authorities have linked her death to health issues, which her parents have denied.
His death triggered a wave of protests during which women, the spearhead of the protest, took off and burned their headscarves, shouting woman, life, freedom
.
The street does not take off
Despite the repression that left hundreds dead, the protest movement continues.
The morality police […] was abolished by those who created it
Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said on Saturday evening, quoted by the Isna news agency on Sunday.
This police force, known as Gasht-e Ershad (Orientation Patrols), was created under ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), to spread the culture of decency and hijab
.
Made up of men in green uniforms and women wearing the black chador which covers the head and upper body, this unit began its patrols in 2006 with the aim of enforcing the strict dress code in the Islamic Republic which also prohibits women to wear tight pants or shorts. Women who violated the code risked being apprehended.
Gasht-e Ershad was created at the time by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, now led by ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi, elected in 2021.
In July, Mr. Raïssi even called for the mobilization of all institutions to enforce the veil law
stating that the enemies of Iran and Islam wanted to undermine the cultural and religious values of the society
.
Nevertheless, under the tenure of his moderate predecessor Hassan Rohani, one could come across women in tight jeans wearing colorful veils.
Change of tone?
On Saturday, the same prosecutor, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, announced that Parliament and the judiciary were working
on the issue of compulsory veiling, without specifying what could be changed in the law.
This is an ultra-sensitive issue in Iran, on which two camps clash: that of the conservatives who brace themselves on the 1983 law and that of the progressives who want to give women the right to choose wear it or not.
According to the law in force since 1983, Iranian and foreign women, regardless of their religion, must wear a veil and loose clothing in public.
Since the death of Mahsa Amini and the protests that followed, a growing number of women are baring their heads, especially in the upscale north of Tehran.
On September 24, a week after the protests began, Iran’s main reform party urged the state to rescind the veil requirement.
Iranian authorities view the protests as riots
and accuse foreign forces of being behind this movement to destabilize the country.
According to a latest report provided by Iranian General Amirali Hajizadeh of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, there have been more than 300 deaths in protests since September 16.