By Mithil Aggarwal -
NBC News
Iran's attorney general announced on Saturday the "abolition" of what is known as
the morality police
, in response to months of unusual social protests across the country over the death of a woman, according to two semi-official news agencies, ISNA and ILNA.
Mohammad Jafar Montazeri made the announcement at a religious event, though he promised that the judiciary would continue to "supervise social behavior."
[However, official Iranian media
repudiated
the information, indicating that this security force depends on the Interior Ministry, not the judiciary, according to the CNN news network, which also indicated that Montazeri announced a revision of the law that
obliges women
to wear
hijab
.]
Protests in Tehran on September 21.
PA
Mahsa Amini
, a 22-year-old, died in a hospital three days after she was arrested in the Iranian capital Tehran by morality police in September, accused of failing to properly cover her hair with a
hijab
as demanded by
strict dress rules for
women
The police claimed that the young woman fell ill and fell into a coma, but her family said they saw how officers beat her, something the Iranian authorities deny.
After her death, young protesters took to the streets, tearing up their
hijabs
and other
symbols
of the Islamic republic.
The protests, led by women, leaked on social networks around the world to become a more general questioning against the lack of democracy in Iran and one of the biggest challenges to the religious regime since the 1979 revolution;
the authorities, however, blamed the protests on “
enemy agents
”.
General Amir Ali Hajizahed, a Revolutionary Guard commander, was mentioned on a website close to this paramilitary body stating that
more than 300 people
have been killed in the protests, including presumably members of the regime's security forces.
Human rights activists put
the protesters dead at 470
and more than 18,000 detained as of Saturday, a figure that could not be confirmed by NBC News.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the "extraordinary courage" of Iranian women for "
standing
up and standing up for their rights."