Kurdistan governor blames deaths on ‘plot by the enemy’ on fourth day of protests over 22-year-old’s death in custody
Iranian government officials have denounced a fourth day of protests after the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in police custody, claiming the demonstrators have fallen victim to a conspiracy by its enemies.after she was arrested by the morality police for not wearing the hijab and her trousers correctly, a tragic episode that has unleashed fury in the streets against the unaccountable and sometimes brutal treatment handed out to women by this branch of the police.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mohsen Mansouri, the governor of Tehran, tweeted: “The main elements of the initial core of the gatherings in Tehran tonight were fully organised, trained and planned to create disturbances in Tehran. The Kurdish human rights group Hengaw, which is based in Norway, said it had confirmed three deaths at rallies in Kurdistan province – one in each of the towns of Divandareh, Saqqez and Dehglan.
On Tuesday, the governor of Iran’s Kurdistan region, Ismail Zarei Koosha, confirmed three people had been killed but blamed the deaths on “a plot by the enemy”, according to the state-affiliated Fars news agency Although Raisi has ordered an investigation and expressed his personal sympathy, his critics say his earlier support for a more interventionist morality police has exposed a cultural division inside Iran.
The regime is determined to argue that she died in police custody not due to any beating but as a result of a pre-existing brain condition, and an operation conducted when she was five. CT scans of her brain released by the hospital have become the subject of medical dispute, with government supporters citing neurologists claiming they show the psychological stress was caused by the previous brain operation, and its critics claiming they show signs of a physical beating and trauma.