Iranian police allegedly shot a 31-year-old woman who resisted having her vehicle seized over a violation of Iran's headscarf law for showing her hair in public while driving.
Arezou Badri, a mother of two, is now unable to walk and is confined to a hospital bed, according to the Associated Press.
Authorities are holding Badri at a police hospital in Tehran under tight security and have restricted family visitation to prevent them from taking photographs of her.
Arezou Badri, 31 years old, mother of two from Iran, was admitted to Vali Asr Hospital in Tehran. She was shot in the spinal cord by the Islamic Republic's Morality Police. Her crime was not covering her hair.
— ATARI (@ATARI1990001) August 14, 2024
He's been paralyzed from waist down. #IRGCterrorists #آرزو_بدری pic.twitter.com/EhM5HZJSvD
The shooting occurred on July 22 around 11:00 p.m. along a coastal road in Iran's northern Mazandaran province. Badri was reportedly driving home from a friend's house with her sister.
Iran's state-run IRNA news agency quoted police Col. Ahmad Amini, who said patrol officers had ordered a vehicle with tinted windows to stop, but the driver disregarded the warning.
There was no mention of a hijab violation or an impound notice.
Human rights activists in Iran, who spoke to witnesses, allege that officers initially fired at the car's tires and that when Badri kept driving, they then shot into the vehicle, piercing her lung and damaging her spine.
Badri's shooting came two years after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was killed while in police custody, igniting nationwide riots over women's rights and the country's hijab law.
As the September 16 anniversary of Amini's death nears, Iran's new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has pledged to ease the enforcement of the headscarf law.
However, news of Badri's shooting and a recent video showing an Iranian girl being manhandled in the streets of Tehran indicate that the threat remains.
"They have elevated it to the most serious crime, where the police are basically allowed to shoot to kill," said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran.
"That's really a war on women."
