The morality police detained the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last Tuesday for not covering her hair with the Islamic headscarf, known as hijab, which is mandatory for Iranian women. Police say she died of a heart attack and deny that she was mistreated.
The hijab has been compulsory for women in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the morality police are charged with enforcing that and other restrictionsIranians took to the streets of the capital on Monday to protest the death of a young woman who had been detained for violating the country’s conservative dress code.
The semiofficial Fars news agency said students in many Tehran universities gathered in protest, demanding an investigation into the death of Mahsa Amini and the dismantling of the morality police, who were holding her when she died. Witnesses said demonstrators poured into Keshavarz Boulevard, a central thoroughfare, chanting “Death to the Dictator." They also chanted against the police and damaged a police vehicle. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns.
Late on Monday, Associated Press reporters saw torched trash bins and rocks strewn across some downtown intersections as the smell of tear gas hovered in the air. Police closed roads leading to the central Vali-e Asr square. Plainclothes security forces and groups of riot police could be seen throughout the area, and mobile internet service was down in central Tehran.
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