Women without hijab to be prosecuted ‘without mercy’: Iran’s chief justice

Iran’s judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, has warned the women who appear in public unveiled that they would be punished and prosecuted ‘without mercy’ even as a growing number of Iranian women have been defying the country’s mandatory dress code.

“Unveiling is tantamount to enmity with (our) values,” Ejei was quoted as saying. “Those who commit such anomalous acts will be punished and will be prosecuted without mercy,” he said.

Iranian women have been ditching their hijabs since the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in the custody of the “morality police” in Tehran last September. Amini had been detained for allegedly wearing her hijab ‘improperly’.

During the nationwide protests, thousands have been detained and four demonstrations have been executed. However, the authorities have refused to back down.

Women are still widely seen without a hijab in the malls, restaurants, and streets around the country risking arrest.

Recently a video that surfaced online shows a man hurling a tub of yogurt at two women without their hijabs. The other customers and passersby were outraged by his actions.

Ejei, the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran, said that law enforcement officers were “obliged to refer obvious crimes and any kind of abnormality that is against the religious law and occurs in public to judicial authorities.”

Ejei’s warning comes after the Interior Ministry issued a statement on Thursday reinforcing the government’s mandatory hijab law.

According to Iran’s Islamic sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures. Violators have faced public rebuke, fines or arrest.

The hijab is “one of the civilisational foundations of the Iranian nation” and “one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic,” the Interior Ministry’s statement said on Thursday stressing that there would be no “retreat or tolerance” on the issue.

It urged ordinary citizens to confront unveiled women. Such directives have in past decades emboldened hardliners to attack women with impunity, says a report in The Guardian.