Iran’s attorney general has said that the country’s “morality police” will be disbanded, according to media reports on Sunday.
“Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary,” attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted as saying late Saturday by the ISNA news agency.
However, it is unclear whether the force will be set up again in a different context or under a different name. State news agencies have reported that death sentences and legal proceedings for “morality” offences will continue.
Kamran Matin is a Senior Lecturer of International Relations at the University of Sussex and told DW that the announcement should be viewed with a level of circumspection.
“I would issue a note of caution initially about the announcement because as the Attorney General said the so-called morality police was not part of the judiciary system, it was an organ of the judiciary. It was actually part of the so-called law enforcement forces or police force,” Matin said and pointed out: “Such an announcement should really be announced by that institution and that hasn’t happened yet.”
Tehran under pressure
“Of course, the judiciary continues to monitor behavioural actions,” Montazeri told a conference Saturday outlining religion-based policy.
In September, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the morality police, after having been arrested for not properly wearing a hijab headscarf, leading to months of anti-government protests.
The regime in Tehran has been under considerable pressure since Amini’s death.
On Saturday, Montazeri also said authorities were reviewing the decades-old law requiring women to wear headscarves to see if it needed any “changes.”
Who are the morality police?
The so-called morality police is a unit of Iran’s police force tasked with enforcing laws on Islamic dress codes and other behaviour in public.
They began patrolling the streets in 2006 after they were established by hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In accordance with Iranian law, women and post-pubescent girls must wear head coverings and loose-fitting clothing in public.
The morality police have been accused of arbitrarily detaining women for transgressions.