Iran says Mahsa Amini died of illness rather than ‘blows’

Agencies | Uthai Sawan         

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Iran said an investigation into the death in custody of Mahsa Amini found she lost her life to illness rather than reported beatings that sparked three weeks of bloody protests.

Amini, 22, died on Sept 16, three days after falling into a coma following her arrest in Tehran by the morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

Anger over her death has sparked the biggest wave of protests to rock Iran in almost three years and a crackdown that has killed dozens of protesters and seen scores arrested. Despite the security forces’ use of lethal force, the women-led protests have continued for 21 consecutive nights, according to online videos.

Iran’s Forensic Organisation said yesterday that “Mahsa Amini’s death was not caused by blows to the head and vital organs and limbs of the body”. The death of Amini, whose Kurdish first name is Jhina, was related to “surgery for a brain tumour at the age of 8”, it said in a statement.

Amini’s bereaved parents have filed a complaint against the officers involved, and one of her cousins living in Iraq has told AFP she died of “a violent blow to the head”. Other young girls have lost their lives at the protests, but Amnesty International says Iran has been forcing televised confessions out of their families to “absolve themselves of responsibility for their deaths”.

The mother of 16-year-old Nika Shahkarami, who died after going missing on Sept 20, insisted on Thursday she was killed by the state after joining an anti-hijab protest in Tehran. Nasrin Shahkarami also accused the authorities of threatening her to make a forced confession over the death of her daughter Nika.

“I saw my daughter’s body myself... the back of her head showed she had suffered a very severe blow as her skull had caved in. That’s how she was killed,” she said in a video posted online by Radio Farda, a US-funded Persian station based in Prague.

Iran’s judiciary has since denied reports the security forces killed another teenage girl, Sarina Esmailzadeh, at a rally in Karaj, west of Tehran. Its website quoted a prosecutor as saying an investigation showed Esmailzadeh, also 16, had “committed suicide” by jumping from a building.

In a widening crackdown, Iran has blocked access to social media, including Instagram and WhatsApp and launched a campaign of mass arrests. Protesters have sought ways to avoid detection, with schoolgirls hiding or blurring their faces while shouting “Death to the dictator” and defacing images of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in verified videos.

Other footage has shown people chanting the protest catch cry “Woman life freedom” from their apartment windows under the cover of night.