Iran Security Forces Put Woman In Harsh Prison For Eating At Restaurant Without Hijab

Iranian security officials have detained a woman after a photo of her and another woman eating at a Tehran restaurant without wearing head scarves was widely circulated online, her family said.

The image, which surfaced on Wednesday, depicts the two ladies enjoying breakfast at a café that, like the majority of coffee shops in Iran, is typically frequented by men.

Donya Rad, one of the ladies in the picture, was taken into custody not long after it was posted online. According to her sister, who spoke with CNN, security services called Donya and asked her to appear in person to defend her acts.

According to her sister, “After visiting the designated place, she was arrested, after a few hours of no news, Donya told me in a short call that she was transferred to Ward 209 of Evin Prison.” The dictatorship imprisons political dissidents in Tehran’s restaurant infamously harsh Evin Prison, which is only intended for inmates under the control of Iran’s intelligence ministry.

Security authorities are said to have recently imprisoned numerous prominent Iranians, including Faezeh Rafsanjani, the daughter of former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, writer and poet Mona Borzouei and Hossein Mahini, who plays football for Iran.

Ali Karimi, a former football player, was shown with well-known Iranian artists and actresses who have been outspoken in their support for the demonstrations on the front cover of the state-aligned newspaper Hamshahri daily on Thursday. The title read, “Celebrities of Disturbance.” They are cited in the article as “one of the main reasons for recent popular protest.”

After nearly two weeks of protests, the government crackdown has persisted, resulting in confrontations between security forces in which many have died. According to an estimate by Iran Human Rights, protests that followed Mahsa Amini’s custodial death resulted in at least 83 deaths, including children.

According to state news agency IRNA, more than a thousand persons involved in the protests have been arrested as of last weekend. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that as of Thursday, at least 28 journalists have been detained.

In a statement released on Thursday, Amnesty International stated that they are “investigating the authorities’ mass arrests of protesters and bystanders, as well as journalists, political activists, lawyers, and human rights defenders, including women’s rights activists and those belonging to oppressed ethnic minority groups.”