Iranian high school student Armita Garawand, who fell into a coma in controversial circumstances in early October in the Tehran metro, died on Saturday, local media announced. “Armita Garawand, a student (residing in) Tehran, died an hour ago after intensive medical treatment and 28 days of hospitalization in the special care unit,” announced the Borna agency, affiliated with the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Aged 16 and from a Kurdish region, the teenager had been hospitalized at Fajr hospital in Tehran since October 1 after fainting in the capital’s metro. The circumstances of this malaise are controversial. The authorities claimed that the teenager had been the victim of a “breakdown” and denied any “verbal or physical altercation” between her “and passengers or metro executives”.
Possible “attack” by the moral police
On Saturday, the local Tasnim agency cited the “official opinion of doctors” according to which the girl had “suffered a fall leading to brain damage, followed by continuous convulsions, a decrease in cerebral oxygenation and a cerebral edema, after a sudden drop in blood pressure.
But according to NGOs, the high school student was seriously injured during an “attack” on the part of members of the moral police, responsible for enforcing the obligation for Iranian women to wear the veil in public. This case came just over a year after the death in custody on September 16, 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who was arrested by the moral police for allegedly violating the strict dress rules imposed on women in Iran.
This death triggered a vast protest movement in the country which left several hundred dead, including law enforcement officers, and led to the arrest of thousands of people.