Iranian authorities have whipped a woman 74 times for “violating public morals” and fined her for not covering her head, the Islamic Republic’s judiciary said.
“The convicted, Roya Heshmati, encouraged permissiveness (by appearing) disgracefully in busy public places in Tehran,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said on Saturday.
“Her penalty of 74 strokes of the lash was carried out in accordance with the law and with sharia,” and “for violating public morals,” Mizan said.
Kurdish-focused rights group Hengaw identified Heshmati as a 33-year-old woman of Kurdish origins. She was arrested in April “for publishing a photo on social media without wearing a headscarf,” her lawyer Maziar Tatai told the reformist Shargh daily.
Heshmati was also ordered to pay a fine of 12 million rials (around $25) for “not wearing the Muslim veil in public”, Tatai said.
All women in Iran have been required by law to cover their neck and head since shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Officials have installed surveillance cameras in public places to monitor violations and have shut down businesses that breached the rules.
