US Officials React To Death Of Young Woman, Protests In Iran

Throughout Monday fierce protests took place in Western Iranian cities and towns mainly in Kordestan (Kurdistan) Province, after a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini died Friday from severe brain injury at the hands of the Islamic religious police for her improper hijab.

Mahsa Amini was from the Kurdish majority town of Saqqez who visited Tehran last week where she was detained and assaulted by the hijab police. She was taken to hospital on September 13 in a coma and died on Friday.

Police forces fired at protesters in Divandarreh, Kordestan, where at least 10 people were injured, and there were clashes in Saqqez on Monday.

At the same time, people in Tehran and the central city of Esfahan (Isfahan) began protests with bouts of clashes with security forces.

There were also large gatherings on some university campuses in the capital, where Revolutionary Guard’s Basij members attacked congregating students. In one video, a group of students stand outside the office of their university’s cleric, most probably the representative of the Supreme Leader at the university, chanting “Mullahs Must Get Lost” as the cleric is watching them through his window.

There were also strikes in Kurdish populated areas and people send videos to Iran International showing security forces firing and residents opening their doors to shelter protesters.

Protests in Tehran came to an end in the night, but local reporters said that both size of the crowd and their determination to resist the security forces were unexpected. One reporter estimated that at least 10,000 people had gathered in Tehran's center.

Below, we offer our readers a glimpse of event that took place on Monday. We will resume live coverage of events on Tuesday. Our current coverage ended at 01:00 Theran time, September 20.

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Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights group, reported late on Monday local time that six protesters, including four teenagers, were injured by security forces in Mahabad, a Kurdish majority city of around 170,000 in West Azarbaijan Province.

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23:10 Local time - Iran International has learned that a protester shot by security forces in Saqqez, Kordestan Province today has died of his injuries. Saqqez is the hometown of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who died on Friday of injuries she received in police custody.

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23:00 Local time - Iranian reporters in Tehran say that mobile internet is down in the capital amid anti-government protests. The government frequesntly interrupts internet connection during protests to prevent news and videos from reaching the outside world and also hindering communication among residents.

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The European Union’s External Action arm of the Diplomatic Service has issued a statement condemning the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody last week. “What happened to her is unacceptable and the perpetrators of this killing must be held accountable,” the statement said on Monday.

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21:40 Local time - Protesters in Tehran have remained on Keshavarz Boulevard and are still chanting against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. They torched one of the motorbikes used by the anti-riot police in the area.

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21:30 Local time - Kurdpa, a Kurdish rights group, has identified two of the four protesters killed by security forces in Divandarreh in Kordestan Province as Fouad Ghadimi and Mohsen Mohammadi. Both men passed away in hospital in Sanandaj, capital of the province, this evening.

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21:10 Local time update - In the religious city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran protesters who took to the Mellat Park and streets of Vakilabad district earlier today are chanting “Down with the Dictator”, “Our IRIB (state broadcaster), Shame on you!”, “May your soul rest in peace Reza Shah” and “We don’t want to wear headscarves”. Mashhad is Iran's second-most populous city with a population of over 3 million and home to the shrine of the eight imam of Shiites. President Ebrahim Raisi who hails from Mashhad is son-in-law of Ahmad Alamolhoda, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative in the Khorasan Razavi.

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Some social media reports say security forces fired at people in Rasht and a protester has been shot. Protests began in Rasht, capital of northern province of Gilan, earlier this afternoon and have continued into the evening.
Protesters in Rasht who took to the city’s main square have been chanting “Shame on you Khamenei, Leave the country alone”, “Death to Khamenei”, and “We don’t want Islamic rule” and telling the Basij militia to “get lost”.

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Earlier on Monday students of several major universities in the capial, including Tehran University, staged rallies and marches inside university campuses. “We are all Mahsas, “Fight us and we will fight back [till we win]”, students of Tehran University shouted. Students also chanted against the IRGC’s Basij militia and clashed with Basijis.

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18:15 Local time - Social media users have posted photos and videos of women in Tehran who removed their headscarves and waved them in the air and a motorcycle belonging to security forces burning on the corner of one of the streets.

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In Divandarreh, a small town of around 25,000 in Kordestan Province, security forces opened fire on protesters and used tear gas around mid-day. An informed source told Iran International that at least four people have been killed as security forces opened fire with live bullets at protesters in the city of Divandarreh in the western Kurdistan province.

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18:00 Local time - Protests in Tehran began from Hijab Street off Keshavarz Boulevard in central Tehran as announced by women’s rights activists Sunday evening. A video taken at Keshavarz Boulevard near Tehran University, shows police and special forces violently shoving protesters and hitting them with batons to disperse them.

“Down with the Dictator” and “We will kill the ones who killed our sister”,thousands of protesters chanted in Tehran.

"We believe in the necessity of using political approaches and solutions to end conflicts and reduce tension and political dialogues to resolve the differences between the two countries," the ministry’s spokesman Nasser Kanaani told reporters at his weekly press briefing in Tehran.

Kanaani said Iran did not spare any efforts to help end the conflict after border clashes broke out between its northwestern neighbors Tuesday and said the Iranian president spoke with Armenian Prime Minister Nicole Pashinyan while foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held a phone conversation with his Azerbaijani counterpart to resolve the situation.

“Escalation of tensions and instability in South Caucasus will not serve the interests of any of the involved and neighboring countries. What can solve the crisis is dialogue between the two countries and the use of regional capacities to stabilize the region," he added while stressing that Tehran considers any other approach “provocative”.

Iran has to an extent supported Armenia in the conflict with Azerbaijan and has warned that it would not allow any seizure of territory from Armenia proper by Baku. Tehran in the past has also expressed alarm at alleged Israeli military presence in Azerbaijan. Amir-Abdollahian also warned in October 2021that Iran would not tolerate "geopolitical change" in the region and at its borders.

In response to a question about US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Armenia and her expression of support for Yerevan, callingBaku an occupier, and American presence in the Caucasus, Kanaani reiterated that Iran viewsthis issue within the framework of Tehran’s afore-declared “principled political view of the developments in the South Caucasus and the conflict”.

Pelosi on Sunday said it was obvious that the border fighting was triggered by Azeri assaults on Armenia and that the chronology of the conflict should be made clear and pledged American support for Armenia’s sovereignty.

Pelosi's candid support for Yerevan has hugely angered Baku, which Armenia says has occupied some of its territories when the border clashes broke out a week ago.

The Armenian Prime Minister has accused Baku of attacking Armenian towns to avoid negotiating over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated enclave inside Azerbaijani territory, while Azerbaijan accuses its neighbor of carrying out intelligence activity along the border and moving weapons and attacking it's military positions along the border.

Speaker of Armenia’s parliament, Alen Simonyan, last week criticised the response of a Russian-led military alliance to Yerevan's request for help. Russia, which operates a military base in Armenia, sent thousands of peacekeepers to the region in 2020 as part of a deal to end six weeks of hostilities during which Azerbaijan make significant territorial gains in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nearly 300 people were killed, and dozens were injured in the recent conflict which marked a major escalation in the 2020–2022 Armenia–Azerbaijan border crisis.

The escalation of decades-old hostilities between the south Caucasus countries has fuelled fears that a second full-fledged war could break out in the post-Soviet world in addition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of hijab enforcement patrols, has shaken the country, with reports saying police forces fired at protesters in Divandarreh, where at least 10 people were injured, and Saqqez in the Kurdistan province on Monday. People in the capital Tehran and the central city of Esfahan (Isfahan) are also holding on-and-off protests with bouts of clashes with security forces. 

Business owners in the cities with large Kurdish populations such as Baneh, Marivan, her hometown Saqqez, and Kurdistan provincial capital have staged a general strike to protest the murder of Mahsa Amini, also known as Zhina, announcing that they will continue the strikes for several days despite warnings by the authorities. 

Videos sent to Iran International show police using tear gas against people while many citizens have opened the doors of their houses to shelter the protesters. 

In one video, a group of students stand outside the office of their university’s cleric, most probably the representative of the Supreme Leader at the university, chanting “Mullahs Must Get Lost” as the cleric is watching them through his window.

While authorities are lying about the circumstances of Mahsa Amini’s death and defending the Islamic religious patrols, Tehran’s “morality” police chief Colonel Mirzaei has been “suspended” until further investigation into Mahsa’s death. 

In two television interviews ahead of leaving Monday for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, where he is due to speak this week, Raisi stressed Tehran’s lack of trust in both Washington and European states. This, he said, followed US withdrawal from the 2015 deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – and Europe’s failure to support Iran economically in the face of US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

Speaking last Tuesday to America’s CBS in Tehran in an interview broadcast over ten minutes Sunday, and to Qatar’s al-Jazeera in a half-hour slot Friday in Samarkand during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Raisi said that while Iran wanted to expand trade globally with sanctions lifted it was ready to emphasize links with other countries facing sanctions.

“If there were guarantees, then the Americans could not withdraw from the deal,” Raisi said. “The Americans broke their promises, they did it unilaterally…We cannot trust the Americans because of the behavior we have already seen from them.”

CBS billed the interview as Raisi’s “first with a western reporter” while Raisi might receive more media coverage while in New York.

Meeting Biden ‘not beneficial’

Asked about Iranian-Americans detained in Iran, Raisi referred to Iranian nationals imprisoned in the US “because they tried to circumvent sanctions.” He reiterated talks “between the two countries” on this “humanitarian issue” were possible aside from the nuclear talks.

Raisi ruled out a “face to face” meeting in New York with President Joe Biden, which he said “would not be beneficial” as Iran had “not witnessed in reality” any changes since the administration of President Donald Trump, who in 2018 withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement and imposed ‘maximum pressure.’ But Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Monday kept the door open to contacts during the UN summit.

Interviewer Lesley Stahl quizzed Raisi over 1988 prison executions, at time when the president was deputy prosecutor in Tehran. Raisi dismissed “allegations and claims made by a terrorist group” – the Mujahideen-e Khalq, whose members were most of those executed. CBS highlighted Amnesty International calling the executions as “a crime against humanity.”

Quizzed over the Jewish holocaust and Israel’s “right to exist,” Raisi evaded the question by bringing up the rights of Palestinians “forced to leave their homes and motherland,” and said Israel’s accords with some Arab states meant those states “were stabbing the very idea of Palestine in the back.” He also called for “justice” over the “heinous crime” of the US 2020 killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

Building confidence

Raisi’s interview with Jazeera focused on Iran’s strategy in looking to expand ties with other SCO members – China, India, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Russia Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – to create “balance” and as a bulwark against current or future US sanctions.

“Those who are violators of their commitment, they need to build confidence again,” he said. Asked over 40 years of poor relations with the US, Raisi evoked US support for the ‘terrorist’ MEK, for Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 war, its 1988 shooting down of the civilian Iran Air Flight 655, and decades of sanctions – all of which he called a “very long list.”

In fact, the Soviet Union rendered greater support to Iraq with large arms shipments, but the Islamic Republic maintained ties with Moscow and later expanded relations. Also, there is no evidence of the US administrations having helped the MEK, although some US lawmakers support the organization.

The medical documents and dozens of exclusive images sent to Iran International by a hacktivist group vividly show a skull fracture on the right side of her head caused by a severe trauma to the skull, which corroborate earlier accounts by her family and doctors about her being hit several times on the head, proving that the Iranian police's claim that she suffered a heart attack was untrue.

Images of her chest show bilateral diffuse alveolar hemorrhage and damage due to aspiration pneumonia, secretion retention and superimposed infection. Doctors say the results are compatible with acute respiratory distress syndrome due to brain trauma.

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The 22-year-old woman’s death in custody by the hijab police has led to indignation among Iranians and several anti-regime protests in different cities.

A source from the hospital where she died told Iran International on Saturday that her brain tissue was crushed after "multiple blows" to the head, adding that Amini was taken to Kasra Hospital in capital Tehran while she was not responsive and brain dead.

The source added that her lungs were filled with blood when she was transferred to the hospital and it was clear that she “could not be revived." 

This source emphasized that Mahsa's condition "was such that she could not be saved nor was surgery possible because her brain tissue was seriously damaged and it was clear that the patient was not injured by a single punch and must have received many blows to her head."