16-year-old Armita Geravand, who had been in a coma since early October after an alleged confrontation with Iranian moral police, has been declared brain dead. That writes Reuters news agency based on a statement by Iranian state media. According to human rights organizations, Geravand was attacked by Iranian moral police at the beginning of this month because she was sitting in the subway without a headscarf.
Iranian authorities deny this reading and say Geravand fainted due to low blood pressure. Released security footage does not show the incident, but witnesses previously said in return for The Guardian that Geravand had been attacked by a female enforcer. After the arrest, relatives of Geravand reported on social media that they were forbidden by authorities to talk about the incident. The 16-year-old Iranian’s mother was arrested after the incident.
The vice squad returned to Iranian streets in July this year after a ten-month absence. They had been taken off the streets after the violent death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who ended up in a coma and later died after she was tackled by law enforcement officers for not wearing her headscarf properly. Her death sparked a wave of protests in Iran, with women refusing to wear their headscarves en masse. In the aftermath of those protests, about 20,000 people were arrested and at least five hundred people died.
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Earlier this week, the European Parliament rewarded Mahsa Amini and the Iranian women’s rights movement with the European Sakharov Prize, the highest prize for human rights in Europe.
Two journalists convicted
Two journalists who reported on Amini’s death last year were given prison sentences of 13 and 12 years on Sunday. reports the Iranian state news agency IRNA. The journalists are accused, among other things, of collaborating with the US and endangering national security.
The two journalists have been in custody since September 2022. They can still appeal the ruling. Earlier this week, a lawyer for Amini was sentenced to a year in prison for allegedly spreading propaganda against the Iranian state and speaking to foreign media about the Amini case.