BBC. Iran’s morality police, which is tasked with enforcing the country’s Islamic dress code, is being disbanded, the country’s attorney general says.
Mohammad Jafar Montazeri’s comments, yet to be confirmed by other agencies, were made at an event on Sunday.
Iran has seen months of protests over the death of a young woman in custody.
Mahsa Amini had been detained by the morality police for allegedly breaking strict rules on head coverings.
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Mr Montazeri was at a religious conference when he was asked if the morality police was being disbanded.
“The morality police had nothing to do with the judiciary and have been shut down from where they were set up,” he said.
Control of the force lies with the interior ministry and not with the judiciary.
On Saturday, Mr Montazeri also told the Iranian parliament the law that requires women to wear hijabs would be looked at.
Even if the morality police is shut down this does not mean the decades-old law will be changed.
After the BBC and other foreign media picked up the attorney general’s statement, some Iranian state media outlets pushed back on the morality police had been disbanded.
State-run Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam said some had “tried to misinterpret” what the attorney general said.
“The most that can be understood from Mohammed Jafar Montazeri’s remarks is that the morality police’s patrols have not been connected to the judiciary since their inception.”
Conservative outlet Student News Network (SNN) dismissed the “false headlines” and stressed that observing hijab is “still a law in Iran”.
However, the reformist Sharq newspaper said it had approached the public relations office of Tehran’s police force but that officials had “dodged” its question on disbanding the Guidance Patrol.
And when asked about Mr Montazeri’s remarks during a visit to Serbia, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian neither confirmed nor denied that they were correct.
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