Mahsa Amini died last year in the custody of Iran’s moral police. (File)
Mahsa Amini’s father was briefly detained on Saturday, rights groups said, amid a heavy presence of security forces on the first anniversary of his daughter’s death in Iranian police custody, sparking months of anti-government protests.
Amjad Amini was warned against celebrating the anniversary of his daughter’s death before she was released, the Kurdish Human Rights Network said. Iran’s official IRNA news agency denied that Amjad Amini had been arrested, but did not say whether he was briefly detained or warned.
Earlier, social media and reports from rights groups spoke of security forces taking up positions around Amini’s home in Saqez, western Iran.
The death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman in police custody last year for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code sparked months of protests in the biggest show of defiance against authorities in years.
Many called for an end to more than forty years of Shiite clerical rule.
According to social media reports, Amini’s parents had said in a statement earlier this week that they would hold a “traditional and religious anniversary ceremony” at their 22-year-old daughter’s grave in Saqez despite government warnings.
A massive security force presence was deployed in the mainly Kurdish areas of Iran on Saturday in anticipation of unrest, according to human rights groups.
Widespread strikes were also reported in several cities in Iran’s Kurdistan region.
However, IRNA said Amini’s hometown of Saqez was “completely calm” and that calls for strikes in Kurdish areas had failed due to “the vigilance of the people and the presence of security and armed forces”.
It quoted an official in Kurdistan province as saying: “A number of officers linked to counter-revolutionary groups and who planned to create chaos and prepare media fodder were arrested in the early hours this morning.”
More than 500 people, including 71 minors, were killed, hundreds injured and thousands arrested in the protests that followed Amini’s death, rights groups said. Iran carried out seven executions linked to the unrest.
In a report last month, Amnesty International said Iranian authorities “have subjected victims’ families to arbitrary arrest and detention, imposed cruel restrictions on peaceful gatherings at grave sites and destroyed victims’ gravestones.”
Many journalists, lawyers, activists, students, academics, artists, public figures and members of ethnic minorities accused of links to the protest wave, as well as relatives of protesters killed in the unrest, have been arrested, summoned, threatened or fired. according to Iranian and Western human rights groups in recent weeks.
Iranian daily Etemad reported in August that the lawyer for Amini’s family was also accused of “propaganda against the system”. If convicted, Saleh Nikbakht faces a prison sentence of one to three years.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
