According to the country’s attorney general, Iran’s morality police, which is in charge of enforcing the nation’s Islamic dress code, is being dismantled.
The remarks made by Mohammad Jafar Montazeri on Sunday at a gathering have not yet been verified by other organizations.
Protests over the murder of a young woman in detention have lasted for months in Iran.
The morality police held Mahsa Amini in custody for allegedly flouting their severe head-covering regulations.
When Mr. Montazeri was asked if the morality police were being abolished, he was attending a religious convention.
The morality police were disbanded from their base of operations since they had no connection to the judiciary, he claimed.
The interior ministry, not the judiciary, is in charge of the police.
Mr. Montazeri also informed the Iranian parliament on Saturday that the law requiring women to wear hijabs would be reviewed.
The long-standing law will not be modified even if the morality police are disbanded.
Since Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by Tehran’s morality police three days earlier and died in detention on September 16, protests led by women that the authorities have dubbed “riots” have erupted across Iran.
Although her passing served as the impetus for the upheaval, other factors like poverty, unemployment, inequality, injustice, and corruption have also contributed to it.
The removal of Iran’s morality police, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, could be “a good thing,” and he commended the “amazing courage of Iranian young people, especially women, who have been leading these protests.”
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has had several “morality police,” but the Gasht-e Ershad, the most recent iteration, is currently in charge of upholding the Islamic code of conduct in Iran.
To police the dress code, which also mandates that women wear long clothing and forbids shorts, ripped jeans, and other attire deemed immodest, they started their patrols in 2006.
