After more than two months of protests triggered by the arrest of Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating the country’s strict female dress code, Iran’s local media said on Sunday that the country has suspended it’s morality police.
“Gasht-e-Ershad,” which translates as “guidance patrols,” and is widely known as the “morality police,” was a unit of Iran’s police force established under former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary,” and have been abolished, Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said while answering a question from a participant at a religious conference.
The announcement to disband the “morality police” came just a day after Montazeri told local reporters that “Both parliament and the judiciary are working [on the issue],” on whether the law requiring women to cover their heads needs to be changed.
Following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police in September, the country has witnessed daily rallies, primarily spearheaded by women, calling for an end to the rule of hard-line clerics.
