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Key Points
- State media in Iran has reported that Armita Geravand has died after falling into a coma earlier this month.
- Rights groups previously said she was hospitalised after an alleged confrontation with ‘morality police’ in Tehran.
- Authorities denied involvement, saying Geravand “fainted” after suffering a sudden drop in blood pressure.
Iranian teenager Armita Geravand died on Saturday a month after on Tehran’s metro, state media and activists said.
“Unfortunately, she went into a coma for some time after suffering from brain damage,” the Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Saturday, adding she had since died.
The Borna news agency, affiliated with the youth ministry, also said Geravand had died “after intensive medical treatment and 28 days of hospitalisation in intensive care”.
The 17-year-old ethnic Kurd, who was declared “brain dead” a week ago, had been hospitalised at Fajr Hospital in Tehran since 1 October after she fell unconscious on the metro.
The circumstances of the incident have been disputed, with metro surveillance footage, which had been broadcast on state television, showing the teenager being evacuated after fainting in a carriage.
Her case was first reported on 3 October by Kurdish-focused, Norway-based rights group Hengaw.
The group alleged Geravand had been badly injured in an encounter on the metro with Iran’s so-called ‘morality police’ officers while not wearing a hijab.
Authorities denied this account, saying Geravand fainted after suffering a sudden drop in blood pressure, and rejected claims that any “physical or verbal altercations” had taken place.
Last week, Iran’s Tasnim news agency quoted doctors as saying that Geravand had “suffered a fall resulting in brain damage followed by continued convulsions, a decline in brain oxygen and a cerebral oedema after a sudden drop in blood pressure”.
It came just over a year after the death of Mahsa Amini, also a young Iranian Kurd, following her arrest by the morality police for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict dress code for women, in an incident that across the Islamic republic.
The death of 22-year-old Amini in the custody of morality police in September 2022 was a catalyst for the biggest show of opposition to Iranian authorities in years.
Months of rattled Iran’s clerical leadership and only dwindled in the face of a crackdown that according to activists resulted in thousands arrested and hundreds killed.
Since last year’s mass protests, women have been increasingly flouting the dress code, which requires head coverings and modest clothes.
But authorities have also sought to sharpen penalties on those seen to be violating the code, which has been in place since 1983, following Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
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