A woman is reported to have been left paralyzed after being shot by Iranian police who attempted to stop her car over alleged violations of the Islamic Republic's draconian hijab laws.
On July 22, Arezoo Badri, 31, a mother of two, was driving home in the northern city of Noor when police signaled her to pull over. According to the Guardian, her vehicle had appeared on an impoundment list. After the shooting, Badri fell into a coma and is now in intensive care.
Last year, as part of the enforcement of modesty laws requiring women in Iran to wear a hijab, authorities announced they would use surveillance cameras to identify women driving without head coverings, with the intention of confiscating their vehicles.
The human rights organization Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA) estimated that Badri was recorded without a headscarf several days before the shooting, and her car's license plate was captured by the cameras. According to reports, when the police ordered Badri to pull over, she attempted to flee, prompting them to open fire.
A source familiar with the incident told the BBC that a police officer initially shot at the car’s tires before aiming at the driver’s seat. "She is paralyzed from the waist down, and doctors have said it will take months to determine whether she will be permanently paraplegic or not," the source said. Badri remains in a coma and is under heavy security in the intensive care unit of a Tehran hospital. Her family is allowed brief visits, but they are not permitted to bring phones in.
In October, 17-year-old Armita Geravand died at Tehran's Fajr Hospital after weeks in a coma. She collapsed in the city's metro following an alleged altercation with the morality police.
Human rights activists accused Tehran's morality police of assaulting Geravand for allegedly failing to comply with hijab regulations, leading to severe injuries. The news of her death came as Iran marked the one-year anniversary of the "Hijab Protests," which erupted following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died days after being detained by the morality police.