Armita Geravand, an Iranian teenager who has been in a coma since early this month after an altercation with officers for violating the country’s hijab law, has become “brain dead,” Iranian state media has reported.
“Unfortunately, Armita Garavand’s state of health is not promising and her brain death seems certain despite the efforts of the medical staff,” media outlets such as IRNA and Tasnim reported.
Iranian authorities have denied reports from human rights groups that the 16-year-old girl was injured after an argument on October 1 with agents in the Tehran subway because she did not comply with the dress code.
The official IRNA agency has denied the accusations and repeatedly stated that the young woman fainted due to a drop in blood pressure, which caused her to fall in which she hit her head on the ground.
Security images released by IRNA show how Garavand and two friends enter one of the capital’s metro cars and then two of them leave carrying the third.
Amnesty International, however, stated that the video has been manipulated with frame acceleration in four sections and there are gaps of more than three minutes in the recording made public.
The case of Armita Geravand is reminiscent of that of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, whose death while detained by the morality police sparked strong protests last year.
The protests only disappeared after a repression that caused 500 deaths, the arrest of at least 22,000 people and in which seven protesters were executed, one of them in public.
The first anniversary of Amini’s death was commemorated on September 16 amid strong repression and a huge deployment of security forces, and only timid protests took place.
Three days ago, the European Parliament awarded the Sakharov Prize for freedom of conscience to Amini and the ‘Women, Life and Freedom’ movement.
In recent months, the Iranian Government has been trying to reimpose the use of the veil, with the presence of patrols in the streets, the denial of services and the approval of a law that toughens punishments for not covering one’s hair.
The disclosure of the almost certain brain death of Armita Garavand coincides with the decision of an Iranian revolutionary court to sentence journalists Nilufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, who revealed the case of Mahsa Amini, to 13 and 12 years in prison respectively for cooperation with the “hostile” Government of the United States, and two other crimes.