Earlier on Sunday some media outlets reported that Iran has scrapped its morality police. Meanwhile, the government did not confirm these reports.
Thus, CBS News reported on December 4 that Iran’s Prosecutor-General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying that: “Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary and have been abolished.”
His comment reportedly came at a religious conference where he responded to a question on why the morality police were being shut down.
The New York Times reported yesterday Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, when asked about the abolishment of the morality police at a news conference in Belgrade, Serbia, where he was on an official visit, did not deny it, but said, “In Iran, everything is moving forward well in the framework of democracy and freedom.”
Meanwhile, ALARABIYA News reports that Iran’s state-run, the Arabic-language al-Alam news channel, on Sunday denied media reports claiming the country’s morality police had been shut down.
The morality police — known formally as the Gasht-e Ershad or "Guidance Patrol" — was established under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to “spread the culture of modesty and hijab.” The units were reportedly set up by Iran's Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. They began their patrols in 2006 to enforce the dress code, which also requires women to wear long clothes and forbids shorts, ripped jeans and other clothes deemed immodest.
