Woman shot while police in Iran were seizing her car

By Jon Gambrell | Related Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — On a darkened highway beside the Caspian Sea, Iranian law enforcement officials opened hearth final month on a 31-year-old lady who had tried to hurry away doubtless realizing they needed to grab her car.

Police had been ordered to impound her automotive, activists say, due to an earlier violation of Iran’s scarf regulation for exhibiting her hair in public whereas driving.

Now unable to stroll and confined to a mattress at a police hospital, Arezou Badri — a mom of two — is the most recent casualty of Iran’s renewed crackdown over headscarves, or hijabs. Her capturing occurred almost two years after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died whereas in police custody over an alleged scarf violation, sparking nationwide protests over girls’s rights and towards the nation’s theocracy.

Because the Sept. 16 anniversary of Amini’s loss of life approaches, Iran’s new reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has promised to ease enforcement of the scarf regulation. However the murky particulars of Badri’s capturing and a latest video of a woman being manhandled within the streets of Tehran present the risks nonetheless lurking for these prepared to disobey it.

“They’ve elevated it to essentially the most critical crime, the place the police is allowed principally to shoot to kill,” mentioned Hadi Ghaemi, govt director of the New York-based Middle for Human Rights in Iran. “That’s actually a struggle on girls.”

Badri’s capturing occurred round 11 p.m. on July 22 alongside a coastal highway in Iran’s northern Mazandaran province as she drove house from a good friend’s home along with her sister, activists say. A short account revealed by Iran’s state-run IRNA information company quoted police Col. Ahmad Amini as saying patrol officers had ordered a car with tinted home windows to cease, however that it didn’t. It made no point out of the hijab violation or impound discover.

Officers seem to have first fired at Badri’s automotive’s tires, in line with the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, which spoke to folks with information of the capturing. As Badri continued driving, officers fired into the car, the group mentioned; the gunfire pierced her lung and broken her backbone.

Underneath Iranian regulation, police should hearth a warning shot, then intention to wound beneath the waist earlier than taking a probably deadly shot at a suspect’s head or chest. If the suspect is driving, officers sometimes intention first for the tires.

Why police initially stopped Badri’s automotive stays unclear, although activists blame it on the impound alert over the hijab violation. It’s additionally unknown whether or not any police car on the scene had a digital camera that recorded the capturing or if any officer there wore a physique digital camera.

There are not any public statistics of deadly police shootings in Iran. Police firearms coaching and techniques range extensively, as some officers face extra paramilitary duties in areas like Iran’s restive Sistan and Baluchestan provinces.

Iran’s Inside Ministry, which oversees the nation’s police, didn’t reply to questions in regards to the capturing from The Related Press.

Authorities are holding Badri at a police hospital in Tehran beneath tight safety, proscribing her household’s visits and stopping them from taking pictures of her, activists say. Regardless of that, a picture of Badri was revealed by the BBC this week, highlighting her case.

“She has no sensation from the waist down and medical doctors have mentioned that it is going to be clear within the coming months whether or not she is totally paralyzed,” mentioned one activist in Iran, who requested anonymity for concern of reprisal.

The hijab turned a focus of demonstrations after the loss of life of Amini in 2022. She died after being arrested for not carrying her scarf to the liking of police. A United Nations panel has discovered that Amini died because of “bodily violence” used towards her by the state.

Amini’s loss of life sparked months of protests and a safety crackdown that killed greater than 500 folks and led to the detention of greater than 22,000. After the mass demonstrations, police dialed down enforcement of hijab legal guidelines, but it surely ramped up once more in April beneath what authorities known as the Noor — or “Mild” — Plan.