Video of man in Iran attacking unveiled women with yoghurt leads to arrest warrants

Iran’s judiciary has issued three arrest warrants after a video emerged of a man attacking two women with a bucket of yoghurt for not wearing headscarves, state media reported on Saturday.

One arrest warrant was issued for the attacker who has been charged with “practical insult and disturbance of public order,” while the other warrants targeted the two female victims for not covering their hair, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency said, citing local authorities.

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The video, which went viral on social media on Friday, shows the man approaching two women – one of them unveiled – in a convenience store. He appears to argue with them for a few seconds before grabbing a bucket of yoghurt and pouring it over their heads.

Remarkable video: An Islamist morality police in Mashhad, Iran pours yogurt over the heads of two women for not wearing hejab.
In a previous era the shopkeeper may have been afraid to intervene against government thugs, but times have changed in Iran. pic.twitter.com/4PWu4btPhl

— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) March 31, 2023

The man is then confronted by the store owner, who was also given a warning by judicial authorities for allowing unveiled women into his store, Mizan Online added.

The official IRNA news agency acknowledged that the man attacked the women for not covering their hair, describing the man’s actions as an “unconventional way of preventing vice.”

The date of the incident, which took place in the northeastern city of Mashhad, is unclear.

Iran made it compulsory for women to wear the hijab shortly after the country’s 1979 revolution, but following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody many women have been appearing in public without one.

Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman, died on September 16 shortly after being arrested by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly breaching the country’s strict dress rules for women. Her death triggered months of nationwide anti-regime protests that eventually subsided due to a deadly crackdown by the regime.

Women who break Iran’s strict dress code risk being harassed and arrested by the country’s morality police. Under this dress code, women are required to fully cover their hair in public and wear long, loose-fitting clothes.

The removal of hijab is “tantamount to enmity with the regime and its values,” the semi-official Fars news agency cited Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei as saying earlier on Saturday.

Mohseni-Ejei added that women who do not cover their hair “will be punished.”

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