Iran has denied scrapping its morality police after officials declared that the feared unit, whose conduct helped trigger months of protests, 'had been closed'.
Iran's attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said on Saturday that the 'Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary' and have been 'abolished from the same place it was launched,' according to the ISNA news agency. He also said the parliament and judiciary were reviewing Iran's mandatory hijab law.
That was interpreted as meaning the morality police - which enforces veiling laws in the strict Muslim country - was being shut down, after it came under fierce scrutiny when a detainee, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died in its custody in mid-September.
However, Iranian state media noted reports abroad and said that Montazeri's comments had been interpreted incorrectly, saying no declaration had been made, and that the morality police continues to operate. Other reports noted that the unit had been largely inactive since the protests broke out after Amini's death.
Amini had been held for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic's strict dress codes, which dictate women must cover their heads in public. Her death unleashed a wave of unrest that has grown into calls for the downfall of Iran's clerical rulers - with the crackdown by the Iranian regime resulting in hundreds of deaths.
Iran's chief prosecutor Mohamed Jafar Montazeri said on Saturday the morality police 'had been closed,' the semi-official news agency ISNA reported. The agency did not provide details, and state media hasn't reported such a purported decision.
'We know you feel anguished when you witness [women] without a hijab in cities, do you think the officials are silent about it?' Montazeri said.
'As someone who is in the field of this issue, I say that both the parliament and the judiciary are working, for example, just yesterday we had a meeting with the cultural commission of the parliament, and you will see the results within the next week or two,' Montazeri was quoted by ISNA.
When asked by a reporter whether the unit would be abolished, he said: 'Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary. It was abolished from the same place it was launched. Of course, the judiciary will continue to monitor society's behaviour.'
In response to subsequent reports abroad about Iran abolishing the unit, Arab-language Al-Alam state television said all that could be understood from Montazeri's comments was that the morality police was separate from the judiciary.
'No official of the Islamic Republic of Iran has said that the Guidance Patrol has been shut,' CNN quoted Al-Alam as saying on Sunday afternoon, following the reports.
'Some foreign media have attempted to interpret these words by the prosecutor-general as the Islamic Republic retreating from the issue of Hijab and modesty and claim that it is due to the recent riots.'
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