The Treasury Department announced sanctions against Iran’s Morality Police following the death of Mahsa Amini in their custody last week, which has sparked deadly protests nationwide.
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced the sanctions on Thursday for what it described as “abuse and violence against Iranian women and the violation of the rights of peaceful Iranian protesters.”
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Amini, 22, died last week after falling into a coma while in detention. Eyewitnesses claim that she sustained her injuries while in the Morality Police’s custody, the department added, noting that the police “blamed her death on a heart ailment, but her family said she has no such condition.”
She was arrested in Tehran for wearing “unsuitable attire” in the form of improperly wearing her hijab.
“Mahsa Amini was a courageous woman whose death in Morality Police custody was yet another act of brutality by the Iranian regime’s security forces against its own people,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “We condemn this unconscionable act in the strongest terms and call on the Iranian government to end its violence against women and its ongoing violent crackdown on free expression and assembly. Today’s action to sanction Iran’s Morality Police and senior Iranian security officials responsible for this oppression demonstrates the Biden-Harris Administration’s clear commitment to stand up for human rights, and the rights of women, in Iran and globally.”
Seven Iranian senior leaders of their security organizations were also targeted in the sanctions. The leaders are from the Morality Police, Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Army’s Ground Forces, Basij Resistance Forces, and Law Enforcement Forces, and their officers “routinely employ violence to suppress peaceful protesters and members of Iranian civil society, political dissidents, women’s rights activists, and members of the Iranian Baha’i community,” the department continued.
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Protests in at least a dozen cities erupted over Amini’s death while protesters and Iranian security forces have clashed, leaving at least nine dead, according to the Associated Press.
