Iranian Deputy Confirms Attack On Women's Swimming Pool

Parliament deputy Fatemeh Alia An Iranian parliament deputy has confirmed that a raid at a women's public swimming pool in Tehran that police had earlier denied did in fact happen. About a week ago, several men reportedly raided the pool where they harassed and filmed the women there.

Conservative lawmaker Fatemeh Alia, a supporter of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, said on June 28 that police have arrested "a number of the thugs" responsible, Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Alia gave no further details. A police official had previously denied the incident took place.

Washington-based Iran analyst Rassoul Nafisi told Radio Farda on June 29 that the incident shows that the Iranian government's policies to promote virtue in society by veiling women and ordering other dress restrictions have been futile.

Nafisi added that when a police official criticized the victims of a gang rape in Khomeini Shahr for the way the women wore their hijabs, he was giving carte blanche to others to attack women they did not think were properly adhering to Islamic dress codes in Iran.

Last month, 14 men are alleged to have raided a party in Khomeini Shahr, near the central city of Isfahan, locked the men present in one room, and raped the women.

Colonel Hossein Hosseinzadeh, chief of the police department's detectives bureau in Isfahan, was quoted in Iranian media earlier this month as saying, "If the women at the party had worn their hijab properly, they might not have been persecuted."

Source: RFE/RL