The parents of Mahsa Amini, whose death after her arrest by Iran’s morality police has sparked a wave of unrest, have filed a complaint against the officers involved, the family’s lawyer said Wednesday.
As the protests have flared for 12 nights, Iran’s police command vowed that security forces would confront the demonstrators “with all their might”, in a crackdown that one rights group says has already killed more than 75 people.
Amini, 22, who was visiting Tehran from Kurdistan province, died on September 16 after she had been detained for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict rules for women on wearing hijab headscarves and modest clothing.
Her bereaved family wants “a thorough investigation” and the release of “all videos and photographs” showing Amini while in custody, their lawyer Saleh Nikbakht was quoted saying by ISNA news agency.
In another escalation, Iran on Wednesday launched cross-border missile and drone strikes that killed nine people in Iraq’s Kurdistan region on Wednesday, after accusing Kurdish armed groups based there of stoking the unrest.
The military attacks were condemned by the UN mission in Iraq, the United States, Britain and Germany, while the federal government in Baghdad summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest the strikes.
“These cowardly attacks are occurring at a time when the terrorist regime of Iran is unable to crack down on ongoing protests inside and silence the Kurdish and Iranian peoples’ civil resistance,” tweeted the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, one of the groups targeted.
– ‘Popular anger’ –
In the Iranian protests, “Woman, Life, Freedom!” has been the rallying cry as women have defiantly burned their headscarves in bonfires or symbolically cut off their hair.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said he told Western diplomats at recent UN meetings that the protests were “not a big deal” for the stability of the clerical state.
“There is not going to be regime change in Iran. Don’t play to the emotions of the Iranian people,” he told National Public Radio in New York, accusing “outside elements” of stirring up violence.
Riot police in black body armour were seen shooting at apartment windows in Tehran’s Ekbatan Town, in footage shared overnight by Radio Farda — a US-funded Persian station based in Prague.
The Iranian police command Wednesday said its “officers will oppose with all their might the conspiracies of counter-revolutionaries and hostile elements, and deal firmly with those who disrupt public order and security anywhere in the country”.
The warning came only hours after the UN said its secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, had called on Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi not to use “disproportionate force” against protesters.
Fars news agency said Tuesday “around 60” people had been killed since Amini’s death, up from the official toll of 41. But the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said the crackdown has killed at least 76 people.
A Iraq-based cousin of Amini said she had been visiting Tehran with her family when she encountered the notorious morality police and died after a “violent blow to the head”.
Amini, whose Kurdish first name is Jhina, was arrested along with her brother and female relatives despite being “dressed normally”, Erfan Salih Mortezaee told AFP in Iraqi Kurdistan.
“The police officer told (her brother): ‘We are going to take her in, instil the rules in her and teach her how to wear the hijab and how to dress’,” he said.
“Jhina’s death has opened the doors of popular anger,” said Mortezaee, who joined the Iranian Kurdish nationalist group Komala after leaving Iran a year ago.
– ‘Women’s revolution’ –
In an interview near Washington with AFP, the son of Iran’s late shah hailed the protests as a landmark revolution by women and urged the world to add to the pressure on the clerical leadership.
Reza Pahlavi, whose father was toppled in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, urged greater preparation for a future Iranian system that is secular and democratic.
“It is truly in modern times, in my opinion, the first revolution for the women, by the women — with the support of the Iranian men, sons, brothers and fathers,” said Pahlavi, who lives in exile in the Washington area.
“It has come to the point, as the Spaniards would say, basta — we’ve had enough.”
On Tuesday, authorities in Iran, having arrested more than 1,200 people, also arrested the daughter of ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for “inciting rioters”, Tasnim news agency reported.
The crackdown has drawn condemnation from around the world, with Germany summoning the Iranian ambassador and Canada announcing sanctions.
Spain also called in the Iranian ambassador to express its “objection over the repression of the protests and the violation of women’s rights”.
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