The Iranian regime’s Attorney General has dismissed a police brutality video that was published on social media last month and shows a plainclothes police agent brutally arresting a young woman for so-called “immoral” conduct in Tehranpars, Tehran.
Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said: “The Judiciary supports a powerful police force [and] the Judiciary does not pay any attention to these kinds of propaganda and hype.”
He then, according to the state-run Mehr News Agency, encouraged the police and security forces to keep dealing with what he termed “social abnormalities” in whatever way they saw fit, saying that the Judiciary had a duty to provide permits to the police wherever it is needed.
He said: “We expect the police to deal with abnormalities of any kind. We cannot sacrifice moral and social security because of things that were said or done by spiteful elements on the internet.”
Montazeri then tried to claim that videos showing police brutality or suppression in Iran were “pre-prepared.”
He said: “Norm breakers know that if they want to damage the image of the police in such a way by producing and publishing pre-prepared videos on the internet, the people and the judiciary will not accept this.”
Although it is not clear what is meant by that. The videos are not staged, faked, or planned in advance because no police officer would agree to that. And we know the video features real police officers because the two agents responsible for this violent attack were initially “arrested and discharged.” The Greater Tehran Police Information Centre later announced that the orders for the officers’ arrest and discharge were suspended, pending further investigation.
The videos also do not appear to be edited in any way and they were online so quickly that it would be almost impossible to edit them. This really seems like an attempt by the regime to cast doubt on the story, but without having a credible explanation.
In the video, a plainclothes police officer can be seen pulling a young woman by her hair before throwing her in a police car. Other people in the area, mostly young women, can be heard screaming and yelling at the police to “leave her alone”.
Her crime? She was engaging in a water fight with friends in the Tehranpars Park, which the regime says violates their so-called “morality” laws.
This is far from the first time that police brutality was caught on camera in Iran.