An Iranian high school student who fell into a coma in controversial circumstances on the Tehran metro in early December, is not brain dead according to local media.
“Armita Geravand’s state of health is not encouraging and, despite the efforts of doctors, she appears to be brain dead,” Iran’s Borna agency, linked to the Ministry of Youth and Sport, said in a statement Sunday.
The 16-year-old, from a Kurdish region, has been in Tehran’s Fajr Hospital since 1 October after collapsing in the capital’s underground.
The circumstances surrounding her fainting are controversial. The authorities claimed that the teenager had suffered a “drop in blood pressure” and denied any “verbal or physical altercation” between her “and passengers or staff on the metro”.
However, according to NGOs, the schoolgirl was seriously injured in an “assault” by members of the morality police, who are responsible for enforcing the requirement for Iranian women to wear the veil in public.
This case comes just over a year after the death in custody, on 16 September 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman arrested by the morality police for allegedly breaching the strict dress rules imposed on women in Iran.
Her death sparked off a vast protest movement in the country that left several hundred people dead, including members of the security forces, and led to the arrest of thousands of people.
