Iran says Armita Geravand, 16, bumped her head on a train, but questions abound a year after Mahsa Amini died
Tehran — Iran's government is trying very hard not to face a repeat of the unrest that followed the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in the custody of the country's "morality police" just less than a year ago. But a new case, that of 16-year-old Armita Geravand, has once again forced authorities to deny that officers, this time members of a local force called Guardians of Hijab, were involved in an attack on a young woman for breaking the Islamic republic's strict dress code.
Geravand, born in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah, was heading to school with friends on a local train in Tehran early on the morning of Oct. 1. She and her two companions boarded a subway car but, not long after, blurry security camera video shows her friends, with help from two other women, dragging Geravand, who seemed motionless, out of the train onto a platform at another station.
She ended up in a Tehran hospital.
Iranian officials insist — as they did in the Amini case — that a medical episode was to blame. State TV and other official outlets have reported that Geravand's blood pressure dropped, leading to her collapsing and banging her head on the train door.
But there are other versions of what happened on the train, told by her friends and other witnesses. These unofficial accounts, reported by media outlets based both inside and outside Iran, suggest two female guards on the subway train — part of a force employed by the Tehran municipal government to monitor and enforce the mandatory wearing of the Islamic hijab, or headscarf, by all women — got into an altercation with Geravand over her clothing.
They include claims that Geravand fell and hit her head on the train door only after she was hit by the guards.
A reporter with Iran's private Shargh newspaper, one of the most popular reformist outlets in the country, was arrested but later released with a warning after trying to visit the Fajr Air Force Hospital outside Tehran, where Geravand has been admitted since the incident, to try to cover the story.
Shargh journalist Nilufar Hammedi is still in prison for her reporting on the Mahsa Amini case.
Almost immediately after the incident, Geravand's parents appeared on state media being interviewed at the hospital. They said they believed it was an accident, but it has been reported that there was a heavy police presence at the hospital as they spoke. An unidentified woman seen with the couple, who was not described as a relative or friend of the family, did most of the talking. She stressed that the incident should not be misused by the media.
A local online news outlet called Faraz Daily later posted quotes from what it said was a separate interview with Geravand's father, who purportedly disputed the official narrative and said he had not heard from his daughter and knew only that she was unconscious in the hospital. That story later disappeared from the website, and Faraz's editor Maziyar Khosravi posted an apology, saying the article was mistaken.
The two friends who were accompanying Geravand on the train have been quoted as saying they were all enjoying the ride together, and that no one pushed or hit their friend.
An Iranian teacher's union has claimed, however, that Geravand's friends, family, all of her classmates and the teachers at their school were warned not to challenge the official account.
There are also unconfirmed reports that Geravand's mother, Shirin Ahmadi, has been placed under arrest, but neither the family nor any government officials would confirm or deny that report when contacted by CBS News.
Some outlets have noted that the security camera video aired by Iranian state TV appears to have been edited, and there's a significant chunk of time not accounted for in the clips.
The hospital where Geravand remained four days after the incident is heavily guarded by Iranian security forces, and no media or visitors have been allowed in to see her — not even the young woman's friends or family — since her parents were there on Oct. 1.
As of Thursday, there was no sign of protesters taking back to the streets over the new case. Amini's death sparked months of unprecedented protests in Iranian cities, but a crackdown on the rallies by law enforcement, and the arrest of hundreds of people accused of taking part, quelled the uprisings.