SOS

Mahsa Amini was 'tortured and insulted' before death in police custody in Iran, her cousin says

Mahsa Amini, the young woman whose death in police custody has prompted mass protests in Iran, was “tortured and insulted” before she died, her cousin has said.

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, Erfan Mortezaei told Sky News about what happened to his cousin and how she has become the “voice of the anger of the Iranian people”.

He called on the international community to hold the Iranian regime responsible for her death.

He is the first member of Miss Amini’s family to speak to Western media since her death in police custody in Tehran on 16 September.

In the hours before she died, the 22-year-old had been detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely.

Outcry over her death has boiled over into some of the most serious protests in the country for years, with dozens of people killed as authorities seek to clamp down on unrest.

Mr Mortezaei is a political activist and Peshmerga fighter living in Iraq near the Iranian border.

Speaking to Sky News in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, he said Miss Amini had gone shopping in Tehran with relatives including her brother, Ashkan.

He said they were confronted by the morality police: “When they saw Mahsa and others they decided her hijab was not correct.

"Ashkan tried to explain to them they were not in their home city, and were strangers in Tehran, so please take that into consideration and pleaded not to be taken away.

"In the struggle the police officers pepper-sprayed Ashkan in the face and forced Mahsa into the van and take her to the morality police station.”

Mr Mortezaei said a witness who was in the van has told the family what happened next.

“During the journey to the police station she was tortured and insulted,” he said.

After arriving at the police station Miss Amini began to lose her vision and fainted.

He said it took 30 minutes for ambulance workers to reach her and an hour and a half before she got to hospital.

“There is a report from Kasra hospital [in Tehran] that says effectively by the time she reached the hospital she was already dead from a medical point of view.

"She suffered a concussion from a blow to the head.”

bro is it parasocial to experience art

I have a hard time talking about American law enforcement, because I have ptsd (like a therapist told me this and everything) from my own experiences with cops and because it's so balls quaking insane.

Like, a cop in the United States can pull you over for any reason. Which is a nice way of saying no reason, because literally anything can be used after the fact as justification. A cop can say its cuz you looked at him, or didnt look at him, or it looked like you were holding something, or looked like you were driving too perfectly for it to be natural. It's insane.

There are apparently no circumstances where a cop can't just kill you. The line the courts have applied is "reasonably believed" you were a threat, but that's such a nebulous nothing limit that people get shot for reaching for their license, having their phone in their hand, you're running away with no weapon, not being able to follow conflicting commands, like anything. And cops are almost never charged, because every court is going to believe he could "reasonably believe" he was threatened. Fuck, if you give me enough time, I can make any situation seem juuuuust plausibly threatening enough to pass that bar. It's insane.

A cop can just rob you. Like tell you to give him your wallet, take all the cash out, and just walk away with it. Exactly like you would imagine getting robbed in an alley would go, except no one can help. And he doesn't even have to hide it, he just drops it in a box at the station and they put it in their bank account. It's legal. You can't prove it wasn't drug money. I can't prove any money wasn't at some point drug money. It's insane.

If a cop just walks in your front door and says "I'm here to kill you and your entire family" YOU ARE GOING TO PRISON IF YOU STOP HIM. There is no positive defense for assaulting a police officer in the United States, and doubly so if you kill him. You have effectively no defense against a homicidal cop, which happens same as any other job. Unless for some reason you have cameras all thru your house and clearly caught the audio of him saying that he's there just to kill you, you have zero chance of not going to prison, probably for life. And that's assuming you aren't killed "resisting arrest" while being taken into custody. It is a crime, in this country, for you to defend yourself under any circumstances if the person you're defending yourself from is a cop. That's insane.

You don't have civil rights if a cop says so. You have the right to have a gun, right? A lot of states have open carry. A cop can shoot you if he sees you have a gun. Doesn't matter if you have a license and everything. So you effectively don't have the right to bear arms if a cop can shoot you for exercising it. You have the right to protest. Unless a cop tells you to stop. He doesn't need a real reason to tell you to stop. And if you don't stop, you can be arrested or shot. So you don't really have the right to protest, do you? A cop cant just search your car or house, right? Unless he claims he heard something, or smelled something, neither of which can be proven. So a cop can search whatever he wants, as long as he pretends there was a "reason". So you dont have protection from unreasonable search and seizure, do you? These are no longer rights- they're things the cops allow.. for now. But legally, those rights have already been found to not actually be rights, because any random cop can decide to take that right from you, for any reason. It's insane.

These aren't like crazy things that I'm just making up, these aren't some weird twisted way I'm looking at something, these are all very real things that we all just.. ignore? Police abolitionists and the media bring these things up all the time, and the overwhelming response to it is: so what? Don't break the law and it won't matter. Blue lives matter. More police funding. Cops should have tanks. It's insane. And I always feel like im just rambling and sound insane when I say this kind of stuff because if you wrote a book and had the dystopian government doing the stuff that the police in this country do every single day, those same people who "back the blue" would line up to say stuff like "*Books government* wouldnt have a chance before us real americans stopped them" on twitter and not even get a hint of the irony.

Fourth in a series I of comics about protesting safety tips I made with @this.is.ysabel . This one is about the dangers of police surveillance and how to avoid it if possible. Keep being safe when you go out. Don’t get snatched!

PAY FUCKING ATTENTION TO IRAN

I am FURIOUS and BAFFLED that major news outlets are not covering what’s going on in Iran right now and I don’t fucking have a twitter so I can’t make noise over there, even though apparently that’s the only social media platform people pay attention to????

Students at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran have been one group of many students and professors across the nation protesting, and NOW, the regime’s security forces have LOCKED THE STUDENTS IN THE UNIVERSITY AND ARE ARRESTING THEM IN MASSES AND SHOOTING AT THEM IF THEY TRY TO ESCAPE OUT THE GATES.

You have DOZENS of teenagers running for their lives in the dark while their parents and fellow citizens are protesting outside the gates chanting “free the students”. And NOW, the they’re sending more repression forces to the University!!

A BBC article says it’s unable to verify the events at the university in the same space it writes that VIDEO FOOTAGE on social media shows students RUNNING FROM SECURITY FORCES ON CAMPUS.

THE AUDACITY.

Share as much as you can about this on all of your social media platforms. Tag as many human rights activists and groups and news outlets you can think of to get the information out there. And if you have any friends or family in Tehran, let them know if they already don’t that people are mobilising to the university. Help the students!! Use the hashtags that are going around on social media (#mahsaamini, #jinaamini, #opiran, #iranprotests, to name a few).

I’m adding photos from instagram that give more information. Follow @1500tasvir on instagram for on the ground footage, @middleeastmatters, and @golfarahani to name a few.

[If someone has the time to ID these, you are more than welcome to.]

Please don't get distracted, listen to actual Iranian voices. This so called "misinformation" about the 14,000 to 15,000 prisoners being excicuted, (people that are also miners I might add) that is going around saying it's not true is just another way to distract you from what's happening in iran. The Islamic Regime has done multiple executions In their past, including not that long ago in 2019. Why would they hesitate to do it again once people stop paying attention to their crimes against humanity? The Regime wants you to forget about the voices in Iran, don't let that happen!

Two very different types of people

Things you can make from old, dead laptops

Roger Ebert just destroying some specific kind of nerd(s).