Iranian woman detained after taking clothes off at university in Tehran

By Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN

(CNN) — A female student stripped to her underwear outside her university in Iran in what some student and rights groups say was a protest against the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

A video circulating on social media and shared by rights group Amnesty International shows the woman sat outside the university in her underwear and with her hair uncovered.

She gestures toward her fellow students, many of whom are female and wearing headscarves, before strolling around the premises.

Another video shows her walking down a road, still in a state of undress, before a group of men surround her, bundle her into a car, and drive away.

Amnesty said Saturday the woman had been “violently arrested” after she protested the “abusive enforcement” of the dress code at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University.

The woman had previously been harassed by members of the Basij, an Iranian volunteer paramilitary group, inside the university’s grounds, according to an Iranian student social media channel, the Amir Kabir newsletter. It claimed members of the force had ripped her headscarf and torn her clothes.

Citing eyewitnesses, state-run Fars news agency reported that the student took off her clothes after two security personnel “calmly talked” to her and warned her about flouting the dress code.

The university’s public relations director said the woman was suffering from mental health issues.

CNN hasn’t been able to independently establish the circumstances behind the incident.

Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said on X that she would be “monitoring this incident closely, including the authorities’ response.”

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric described both the video and the report of the woman’s arrest as “disturbing,” and said Iran should make clear her present whereabouts.

The wearing of a hijab (or headscarf) in public is mandatory for women under Iran’s strict interpretation of Islamic law that is enforced by the country’s so-called morality police.

Iranian women can be subjected to harsh punishment, even for minor infractions.

Protests erupted across Iran in 2022 against the dress code following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of the morality police after being arrested for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly.

The subsequent violent crackdown by the Iranian regime killed hundreds of people. Since then, many Iranian women have protested by removing their headscarves in public.

Amnesty called for the immediate and unconditional release of the Azad University student and demanded she be given access to her family and lawyer.

“Allegations of beatings and sexual violence against her during the arrest need independent and impartial investigations,” the human rights campaigners said in a statement on X. “Those responsible must (be) held to account.”

Azad University’s public relations director Amir Mahjob said in a post on X that the university’s security team had intervened “after the indecent act by one of the students” and had taken her to a police station.

In a later post citing a police report, he said the student “was under severe mental pressure and had a mental disorder.”

He also said the student was a mother-of-two, separated from her husband, and that he hoped her family’s reputation would not suffer from online “rumors.”

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CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh and Negar Mahmoodi contributed to this report.