Anger grows in Iran forcing new government to deal with police violence

Following the death of Mohammad Mir-Mousavi, an Iranian citizen who died from beatings while in police custody in the northern city of Lahijan, authorities dismissed the city's police chief.

Yet, many Iranians protest that the removal serves as little more than a smokescreen for a system that continues to unleash violence upon its citizens with impunity.

A newly released video underscores this ongoing violence, showing police officers violently shoving a person into the trunk of a police vehicle.

In a video released by BBC Persian, three officers are seen forcefully cramming an individual into a police vehicle’s trunk in Shahr-e Rey on August 26, assaulting him for several minutes as passerby begin to congregate and watch the incident.

In a Friday night statement, the police command attributed the dismissal of Lahijan's police chief to "insufficient supervision over personnel conduct and behavior." Shargh newspaper reported on Saturday that apparently the victim also had a gunshot wound on his, as some citizens reported hearing a weapons being fired when he was being taken into a police station.

Despite the authorities' efforts to manage the fallout from Mir-Mousavi’s death by promising a forensic report to determine the exact cause, new evidence of police violence continues to surface, dispelling any doubts about the persistence of oppressive tactics.

With the new video showing another instance of police violence, the government’s attempts to explain away Mir-Mousavi’s death with excuses like "excitement caused by friction" between him and the officers, or the inability to "control anger and emotions" by some personnel, ring hollow.

On August 24, Mir-Mousavi was arrested by officers from a special unit in northern Iran following a local altercation. He was then taken to a police station in the Lahijan district, where he was tortured, leading to his death.

On Wednesday, a video emerged, showing the lifeless body of Mir-Mousavi. The footage, captured during the ritual washing of his body, exposed severe signs of torture, including deep wounds on his back and waist.

In a Saturday report on the death of Mir-Mousavi in police custody in Lahijan, the Shargh daily, quoting local witnesses, wrote: "They tied Mohammad to a chair or a post and beat him with cables, iron rods, and batons. Then, a gunshot was heard from inside the station, and in the video from the mortuary, a bullet wound on his back is clearly visible."

The Islamic Republic’s violence did not end with Mir-Mousavi’s death. According to the Hengaw Human Rights Organization, he was the seventh person to die under torture while in the custody of Iranian security forces since the beginning of 2024 alone.

On Friday, the seventh-day memorial service for Mir-Mousavi was held under heavy security pressure. That same night, unconfirmed reports emerged of another death in custody—Komeil Abolhasani, a 32-year-old father of a young daughter, who was allegedly killed under mysterious circumstances in a detention center in Tonekabon. Abolhasani’s case is not verified yet and police has had no reaction regarding it.

As Iran nears the second anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in morality police custody for not adhering to hijab in mid-September 2022, the parallels between these cases are impossible to ignore. Javad Rouhi, a protester arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrations, also died under suspicious circumstances last year, with the government attributing his death to a "drug interaction." Such explanations have been used time and again to obscure the true cause of death for those who dared to oppose the system.

The deaths of Mir-Mousavi, Rouhi, and countless others reveal a pattern of violence that persists unabated. Many believe the Islamic Republic’s actions, such as the dismissal of a police chief, cannot mask the deep-seated issues within its ranks while the government institutions are shielded from accountability and lack of a will for reforms.