Mahsa Amini's family facing pressure to blame medical staff for her demise, says lawyer

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody in September has led to months of nationwide unrest in Iran, with thousands of Iranians taking to the streets to demand more freedoms and women's rights. The widespread unrest represents the biggest threat to the Islamic government since the 1979 revolution. Amini's death has been a source of controversy, with Iranian authorities claiming she died of natural causes, but eyewitnesses and her family claim she was beaten by security agents, as per a report from Radio Free Europe.

Amini was detained by the morality police while visiting Tehran in September because she was allegedly wearing a headscarf, or hijab, improperly. The lawyer for the Mahsa Amini family, Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht, has said that four months after Amini's death, "incomplete investigations have been carried out without [the family's] presence or participation as the complainant". He said that Iran's judiciary has not handed over investigation documents or the hospital report to the family. Instead, they are pressurising the family to blame medical personnel for her death. 

Lawyer of Amini's family tells investigators to probe instead of pressurizing the family

Nikbakht has called on investigators to study the two-hour period of Mahsa's arrest and transfer to the Morality Police Center instead of pushing him and Amini's family to accept the "late arrival and failure" of the medical staff as the cause of her death. He said, "In less than two hours, 95 percent of the vital signs of this young woman were lost, and Mahsa was taken to the hospital like a dead person." The lawyer also stated that security officials have forbidden him from participating in any interviews with domestic or foreign media. Protests over Amini's death have been met with a violent government crackdown, with the activist organization HRANA reporting that as of January 15, at least 522 people have been killed during the unrest, including 70 minors, as security forces try to stifle widespread dissent by detaining thousands, including several foreigners.