In Iran, three people have died during protests over the unexplained death of a young woman after she was arrested by religious police. That’s what the Iranian authorities and human rights activists said yesterday.
According to the governor of Kurdistan Province, the deaths are “suspicious” and not attributable to the security forces. “A citizen was killed with a weapon not used by the security forces,” Esmail Sarei Kuscha said.
According to the Kurdish human rights group Hengaw, three people were killed in Kurdistan on Monday after security forces opened fire.
“Organized” protests
The Iranian authorities blame an orchestrated campaign for the protests. The main elements of Monday night’s gatherings in Tehran were “fully organized, trained and planned to create disruption in Tehran,” the capital’s governor, Mohsen Mansuri, wrote on Twitter on Thursday night.
The protests were triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in a hospital in Tehran on Friday. She had previously been arrested by the religious police on charges of violating strict hijab regulations. It had been speculated on social networks that Amini had been beaten.
Interior Minister Abdolresa Rahmani Fasli and the police rejected this account. Nevertheless, the authorities initiated investigations. Since then, videos have shown protests in several cities across the country, with women demonstratively taking off their headscarves and cutting off their hair. The recordings cannot be checked.