Iran girls poisoned to stop education, says official
- Hundreds of respiratory poisoning cases have been reported, mainly in Qom, south of Tehran, with some needing hospital treatment
- Deputy health minister said ‘it was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed’
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An Iranian deputy minister on Sunday said “some people” were poisoning schoolgirls in the holy city of Qom with the aim of shutting down education for girls, state media reported.
Since late November, hundreds of cases of respiratory poisoning have been reported among schoolgirls mainly in Qom, south of Tehran, with some needing hospital treatment.
On Sunday the deputy health minister, Younes Panahi, implicitly confirmed the poisonings had been deliberate.
“After the poisoning of several students in Qom schools, it was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed,” the IRNA state news agency quoted Panahi as saying.
He did not elaborate. So far, there have been no arrests linked to the poisonings.
On February 14, parents of students who had been ill gathered outside administrative buildings to “demand an explanation” from the authorities, IRNA reported.
The next day government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said the intelligence and education ministries were trying to find the cause of the poisonings.
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Last week, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri ordered a judicial probe into the incidents.
Meanwhile, Iran has released a young Spanish woman, Ana Baneira, who had been in detention since November, Spain’s foreign minister said on Sunday.
“She was freed yesterday but we didn’t want to announce it publicly before her plane had taken off from Iran,” Jose Manuel Albares told journalists.
“I was able to speak with her … she is well,” he said, adding that Baneira was on her way to her home region in northwestern Spain.
Baneira was 24 when she was arrested, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said last year.
The circumstances of her detention were never confirmed by the Iranian authorities, but it took place amid the protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini.
