Activists say woman shot in Iran by police trying to confiscate her car for violating hijab law

On a darkened road above the Caspian Sea, Iranian police opened fire last month on a 31-year-old woman who tried to flee the scene, likely knowing they wanted to seize her vehicle.

Activists say police were ordered to confiscate her car because she had previously broken Iranian headscarf law by showing her hair in public while driving.

Now unable to walk and confined to a bed in a police hospital, Arezou Badri — a mother of two — is the latest victim of Iran’s renewed crackdown on headscarves, or hijabs. Her shooting comes almost two years after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody for allegedly violating headscarf rules, which sparked nationwide protests over women’s rights and the country’s theocracy.

As the anniversary of Amini’s death approaches on September 16, Iran’s new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has promised to ease enforcement of the headscarf law. But the murky details of Badri’s shooting and recent footage of a girl being abused on the streets of Tehran show that dangers still lurk for those willing to break them.

“They have elevated this to the most serious crime, where police have the right to shoot to kill,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran. “It is truly a war on women.”

The shooting in Badri occurred at around 11 p.m. on July 22 on a coastal road in Iran’s northern Mazandaran province as she was returning home from a friend’s house with her sister, activists said. A brief report by Iran’s state news agency IRNA quoted police Colonel Ahmad Amini as saying that patrol officers ordered the vehicle with tinted windows to stop, but it did not. It did not mention the hijab violation or the order to stop the vehicle.

According to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, which spoke to people with knowledge of the shooting, officers first shot at the tires of Badri’s car. As Badri continued driving, officers fired at the vehicle, the group said, puncturing her lung and damaging her spine.

Under Iranian law, police must fire a warning shot and then aim for a wound below the belt before firing a potentially fatal shot at a suspect’s head or chest. If the suspect is driving, officers typically aim for the tires first.

It is not known why police initially stopped Badri’s car, though activists blame it on a warning to stop the car for a hijab violation. It is also not known whether any of the police vehicles at the scene had a camera that recorded the shooting, or whether any of the officers were wearing a camera.

There are no public statistics on fatal police shootings in Iran. Police firearms training and tactics vary widely, as some officers have more paramilitary duties in areas such as Iran’s troubled Sistan and Baluchestan provinces.

Iran’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the country’s police, did not respond to questions from The Associated Press about the shooting.

Authorities are keeping Badri under tight surveillance in a Tehran police hospital, restricting visits from her family and preventing them from taking photos of her, activists say. Despite this, the BBC published a photo of Badri this week, highlighting her case.

“She can’t feel anything from the waist down, and doctors said it will take months to find out if she is completely paralyzed,” said one Iranian activist, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

The hijab became a focal point of demonstrations following Amini’s death in 2022. She died after being arrested for failing to wear a headscarf as police requested. A UN panel found that Amini died as a result of “physical violence” inflicted on her by the state.

Amini’s death sparked months of protests and a security crackdown that left more than 500 people dead and more than 22,000 detained. Police relaxed enforcement of the hijab law after the mass demonstrations, but it was stepped up again in April under what authorities called Plan Noor — or “Light.”

The crackdown on the hijab in Iran remains widely publicized, even though police and state media rarely report on it. Many women still wear their hijabs loosely or leave them wrapped around their shoulders as they walk around Tehran. Women driving without hijabs are believed to have been tracked using surveillance camera technology provided by Chinese companies, comparing their faces with a government-run database of photos, Ghaemi said.

The arrest could lead to fights between women and police.

Surveillance footage released last week by Iran’s reformist website Ensaf showed a 14-year-old girl being abused by morality police in Tehran. Her mother described her daughter’s head being slammed into an electrical box, a policewoman pulling her hair and another putting her foot on her neck. The police described the officers’ behavior as unprofessional, but also accused the girl of using profanity.

“I saw my daughter with a wounded face, swollen lips, a bruised neck, torn clothes and she couldn’t even speak,” her mother, Maryam Abbasi, told the website. “Her eyes were so swollen from crying that she wouldn’t open.”