Berliner Tageszeitung - In protest-hit Iran, Mahsa Amini's parents demand answers on her death

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In protest-hit Iran, Mahsa Amini's parents demand answers on her death

POLITICS 28.09.2022

In protest-hit Iran, Mahsa Amini's parents demand answers on her death / Photo: © AFP

The parents of Mahsa Amini, whose death in the custody of Iran's morality police has sparked 12 nights of protests, have filed a complaint against the officers involved in her detention, the family's lawyer said Wednesday.

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Amini, 22, who was visiting Tehran from western Kurdistan province, died on September 16, three days after she was detained for allegedly breaching Iran's strict rules for women on wearing hijab headscarves and modest clothing.

The bereaved family wants "a thorough investigation" and the release of "all videos and photographs" showing Amini while in custody, said their lawyer Saleh Nikbakht, as quoted by ISNA news agency.

After Amini's death sparked a wave of major unrest, Iran's police command warned that security forces would confront the protests "with all their might", despite growing calls for restraint amid a crackdown that rights groups say has already killed more than 75 people.

In another escalation, Iran launched on Wednesday cross-border missile and drone strikes that killed nine people in Iraq's Kurdistan region, after accusing Kurdish armed groups based there of stoking the unrest.

The strikes were condemned by the UN mission in Iraq, and the federal government in Baghdad summoned the Iranian ambassador.

"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.

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, cheered on by crowds.

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.

- 'Popular anger' -

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.

"We are increasingly concerned about reports of rising fatalities, including women and children, related to the protests," the UN chief's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

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.