Family of 16 year old Armita Garawand, who was allegedly beaten into a coma by Iranian morality police earlier this month for not wearing a hijab, say she has been declared braindead in an interview with the Kurdish rights group Hengaw.
Friends and family of Armita say that on October 1, 2023, she was beaten unconscious by morality police for not wearing a hijab while on a train at the Shohada subway station in Tehran, Iran. A few days later, CCTV footage was released by Iran state media showing Armita being dragged out of the train, however, the footage does not show what happened when she stepped inside.
The passing out of a girl in a Tehran subway station has triggered a misinformation campaign by anti-Iran media outlets.
Tehran subway company has released CCTV footage from the moment the girl enters the station till she is taken to hospital.
Join us: https://t.co/B3zXG74hnU pic.twitter.com/GAgyCWd0aj
— Press TV (@PressTV) October 5, 2023
Iranian state media, as written in the video above, claim that three seconds passed between Armita entering the train and then being dragged out by her friends after allegedly fainting and hitting her head.
Analysis of the footage by by Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab revealed that “the video frame rate was increased in four sections and detected a gap of three minutes and 16 seconds in the footage,” stating that footage was purposefully manipulated to drastically shorten her perceived time on the train when the alleged beating took place.
After the incident, Armita was admitted to the Fajr Hospital, where she has remained in a coma. On October, 22, Armita’s father, Bahman Garavand, told Hengaw that “Armita’s medical team has informed us that her brain is no longer functioning, and there is no hope of recovery.”
Armita’s beating and hospitalization echo that of 22 year old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested, beaten, and eventually died in hospital due to injuries sustained by Iranian morality police for improperly wearing a hijab in public last September. Mahsa’s death sparked country wide anti-government protests in Iran, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of protestors and the arrests of nearly 20,000 people, according to human rights groups.