Montazeri was additionally quoted as saying Iran’s feared morality police had been “abolished” however Iranian state media strongly pushed again on these feedback, saying the inside ministry oversees the drive, not the judiciary.
CNN is reaching out to the Ministry of Interior for remark.
The carrying of a hijab in public is at present necessary for ladies in Iran underneath strict Islamic regulation that’s enforced by the nation’s so-called morality police.
The legal guidelines across the head overlaying sparked a nationwide protest motion after the dying of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being apprehended by the morality police allegedly for not carrying her hijab correctly.
Her dying on September 16 touched a nerve within the Islamic republic, with outstanding public figures popping out in help of the motion, together with high Iranian actor Taraneh Alidoosti.
The nation has been gripped by a wave of mass protests that have been first ignited by Amini’s dying and have since coalesced round a variety of grievances with the regime. Authorities have unleashed a lethal crackdown on demonstrators, with reviews of compelled detentions and bodily abuse getting used to focus on the nation’s Kurdish minority group.
In a latest CNN investigation, covert testimony revealed sexual violence in opposition to protesters, together with boys, in Iran’s detention facilities because the begin of the unrest.
On the hijab regulation, Montazeri mentioned, “We know you feel anguished when you witness [women] without a hijab in cities, do you think the officials are silent about it? As someone who is in the field of this issue, I say that both the parliament and the judiciary are working, for example, just yesterday we had a meeting with the cultural commission of the parliament, and you will see the results within the next week or two,” as quoted by ISNA, state-affiliated media.
But there is no such thing as a proof of what, if any, adjustments could possibly be forthcoming to the regulation, which got here into impact after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
In response to a reporter who requested if the nation’s morality police was being disbanded, Montazeri was quoted by an Iranian state media outlet as saying, “Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary. It was abolished from the same place it was launched. Of course, the judiciary will continue to monitor society’s behavior.”
Arab-language Al-Alam state tv claimed overseas media have been depicting Montazeri’s feedback as “a retreat on the part of the Islamic Republic from its stance on hijab and religious morality as a result of the protests”, however that every one that could possibly be understood from his feedback was that the morality police weren’t instantly associated to the judiciary.
“But no official of the Islamic Republic of Iran has said that the Guidance Patrol has been shut,” Al-Alam mentioned Sunday afternoon.
“Some foreign media have attempted to interpret these words by the prosecutor-general as the Islamic Republic retreating from the issue of Hijab and modesty and claim that it is due to the recent riots.”
The remarks have been uttered in Qom, thought-about a holy metropolis in Siha Islam.