Iranian teenager 'brain-dead' weeks after subway incident, state media reports

A teenage girl who fell into a coma after an incident on Iranian public transport is brain-dead, state media in Iran reported Sunday.

Armita Gerevand, 16, was hospitalized the morning of Oct. 1. The prominent Iranian Kurdish rights group Hengaw, which is based in Norway, said she suffered a “severe physical assault” at the hands of government agents at a subway station in Iran’s capital, Tehran, for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

Iranian authorities have denied there was an altercation and have said she fainted after a drop in blood pressure and hit her head.

On Sunday, several state media outlets, as well as the semi-official Tasnim news agency, reported that she was unlikely to recover.

“Unfortunately, her health condition is not promising and despite the efforts of the medical staff, brain death seems certain,” Tasnim reported.

Her case has been shared widely across social media, drawing comparisons to that of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman whose death in a hospital in September 2022 after she was detained by the morality police sparked a wave of mass protests.

Police said Amini died after she fell ill and slipped into a coma, but her family have said witnesses told them officers beat her, and they have complained how investigations into her death have been conducted.

In Geravand's case, a couple identified as her parents echoed the police version of the events in a video posted online by the state-run news agency IRNA. They said she experienced a drop in blood pressure, fainted and hit her head.

Human rights groups have expressed skepticism about such statements in the past, noting that they could have been made under duress.

Grainy security camera video aired by Iranian state media and reviewed by NBC News shows much of Gerevand’s time at the station, which she enters with her short, dark hair uncovered. However, it does not show a crucial four-second window between when she boards a train and when she is carried out.

The video shows her entering the last carriage of the train at 7:08 a.m. local time. Moments later, a person identified by Iranian state-run media as Geravand is carried out of the car apparently motionless and laid on the platform. Other people surround the person as the train leaves. The video then ends.

Most trains in Tehran have multiple security cameras that are viewable by guards, according to The Associated Press, leading government critics to question why it has not released video from inside the car that would corroborate its side of the story. But the IRNA news agency interviewed a conductor who said this train, number 134, did not.

The key gap in the evidence has fueled demands from human rights groups like Hengaw for clarity about what happened during those four seconds.

The incident drew international condemnation. Abram Paley, the deputy special envoy for Iran, said in a post on X that the U.S. “was shocked and concerned” about the reports alleging she was attacked. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also took to the social media platform to call the incident "unbearable."

Iran’s theocratic government has imposed restrictions on women's dress since the revolution in 1979 that deposed the secular, Western-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Women are required by law to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes. While many have been unveiled in public places such as malls, restaurants and shops across the country since Amini’s death, those found violating the law face public rebuke, fines or arrest.

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