(Tehran) The Iranian student arrested Saturday in Tehran after undressing in public was “transferred to a specialized care center,” the Iranian embassy in Paris announced in a press release on Wednesday.
Posted at 5:50 a.m.
Updated at 12:55 p.m.
“The student in question suffers from psychological fragility and was transferred by ambulance from social emergency services to a specialized care center,” according to the press release, which does not specify the name of the establishment.
Iran’s Minister of Science, Research and Technology, Hossein Simaei, said earlier Wednesday that the Iranian woman’s behavior was “immoral.”
“She broke the norms and her behavior was not based on sharia (Islamic law, Editor’s note), it was immoral and contrary to customs,” declared Mr. Simaei, on the sidelines of a government meeting.
The student was “not” excluded from her university, added the minister.
This student at the prestigious Azad University in Tehran was arrested on Saturday after stripping down to her underwear, to, according to the activist groups that revealed the case, protest against the harassment of security agents who accused her of not not respect the strict Islamic dress code.
In videos that have gone viral, she is seen walking slowly outside the university in panties and a bra, before being roughly taken into a car by men in plain clothes.
Media in Iran broadcast images of the scene, blurring the young girl.
“Those who republished these images have propagated prostitution,” criticized Hossein Simaei, saying that this gesture was justified “neither morally nor religiously.”
“The motivations and reasons for this student’s action are under investigation,” Azad University public relations manager Amir Mahjoub said on Saturday.
“The university security intervened and handed her over to the police station,” he wrote on the social network X blocked in Iran, claiming that the student was “under great pressure and suffering from mental disorders “.
Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani on Wednesday denied reports that the student had been brutally arrested.
The NGO Amnesty International reported on Tuesday evening on treatment” “.
The student, mother of two children and separated from her husband, “once recovered, will resume her studies at the university” if the establishment accepts her, adds the embassy press release, emphasizing the fact that it is “a private matter”.
Refuting any mental disorder, US-based activist Masih Alinejad described a student on
Since the revelation of the affair, the young woman has been established as a new symbol of the struggle of women in Iran.
Islamic law in Iran imposes a very strict dress code on women, who are required to wear headscarves and loose clothing that conceals their shapes.
Iranian women are at the origin of unprecedented demonstrations in the country after the death of the young Kurd Mahsa Amini in September 2022, arrested for not having respected this code.
The “Femme Vie Liberté” movement was massively repressed, with at least 551 deaths and thousands of people arrested, according to NGOs.
