IranThe attorney general said on Saturday that the country’s controversial ethics police would be “abolished”, local media reported, amid the Protests are taking place across the country.
“The Moral Police has nothing to do with Justice and the same organization that founded it, has now abolished it,” Mohammad Jafar Montazeri is quoted as saying at a religious event by the semi-official news agencies ISNA and ILNA, as well as several other media.
Montazeri, who is not responsible for supervising the ethics police as attorney general, added that “the judiciary will continue to monitor social behaviour.”
It’s not clear what he meant by the ethics police being permanently abolished or if they would return in some form.
Montazeri’s brief and undescribed comment came in response to a question about “why the ethics police are closed,” the outlet reported.
NBC News was unable to independently verify his comments.
The Interior Ministry and the Iranian police have not yet commented on the status of the ethics police.
The official state media attending the event did not cover Montazeri’s comments, suggesting that they were not sanctioned by the political establishment.
Iran has been gripped by months of protests, sparked by the death of Mahsa Aminia 22-year-old man from the Kurdistan region of Iran, died in hospital three days after she was detained by ethics police in September.
Amini allegedly did not cover her hair completely and defied the country’s strict dress codes when she was arrested in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
A coroner’s report said in October that Amini died of multiple organ failure and ruled out blows to the head and body as the cause of her death. Police said Amini died after she fell ill and was in a coma, but her family said witnesses told them officers beat her. Police have denied the allegation.
After her death, young protesters put out the ways, tore off their headscarves and insulted the symbols of the Islamic Republic. With women and young girls At the forefront, videos surfaced on social media showing many of them removing, burning their headscarves and cutting their hair in public, openly challenging the cleric-run Islamic Republic State.
Demands for women’s rights then morphed into broader calls to overthrow the regime, posing one of the most serious challenges to the Iranian government since the 1979 revolution. shouted slogans against the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneiand the President Ebrahim Raisi.
The government has blamed what it calls “foreign enemies” for the unrest.
General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the aerospace division of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, was quoted by a website close to the Revolutionary Guards late last month as saying more than 300 people had been killed. , including “martyrs”, an obvious reference to security forces.
Human rights activists in Iran, a US-based human rights group, said in a tweet Saturday that at least 470 protesters have been killed and more than 18,000 have been detained so far.
NBC News could not independently verify either number.
In an interview with the newspaper NBC News Andrea Mitchell end of last month.
Meanwhile, state news agency IRNA reported on Sunday, that authorities executed four people accused of working for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency on Sunday. Three others received long prison sentences.
According to reports, members of the network stole and destroyed public and private property, and kidnapped individuals and interrogated them. It said the alleged spies had weapons and received salaries from the Mossad in the form of cryptocurrency.
IRNA identified the executed prisoners as Hossein Ordoukhanzadeh, Shahin Imani Mahmoudabadi, Milad Ashrafi and Manouchehr Shahbandi. Three other members of the group received sentences of between five and 10 years in prison, the news agency reported.
NBC News was unable to verify this report.
