Iran’s government says the woman is receiving treatment at a facility after first being taken to a police station.

Tehran, Iran – Iran has not yet brought charges against a student who was arrested after she took off her clothes at a university, a government spokeswoman said.

The young woman stripped to her underwear in public on Saturday on a campus of the Islamic Azad University, northwest of Tehran, in an act perceived by human rights defenders, Amnesty International and some social media users as a protest against the mandatory Islamic dress code in Iran.

University security detained her and took her to a police station.

A university official and some local media characterized the woman as suffering from a mental illness.

Local media also shared a clip that purported to show the young woman’s ex-husband. The man, whose face was blurred, could be heard crying and saying she suffers from mental problems and is a mother of two children.

Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the footage.

On Tuesday, Fatemeh Mohajerani, the first female spokesperson for an Iranian government since the 1979 Iranian revolution, told the reformist daily Ham-Mihan that the woman was transferred from a police station to a center for treatment.

“No court case has been opened for this student. The government has a social vision of this issue, rather than a security vision. “We will try to solve the problem of this student as an individual facing a problem,” he said.

The government spokesperson added that he will be able to return to university in the future if it is determined that he suffers from a mental problem. The situation is pending a decision from the authorities, according to Mohajerani.

He said the reason the university was quick to announce that the woman was mentally ill was probably because they had a file on her, after a university-wide psychiatric assessment program was implemented at an earlier stage.

Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said in a statement that the woman’s move was a show of “defiance” to a system that has oppressed women and their rights. bodies.

Iranian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release the university student who was violently arrested on November 2 after she removed her clothes in protest against Islamic University security officials’ abusive enforcement of mandatory headscarves. Azad of Tehran. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/lI1JXYsgtm

— Amnesty Iran (@AmnestyIran) November 2, 2024

Amnesty International described the event as a “protest against the abusive application of mandatory hijab by security officials” at the university.

The organization said she should be protected from possible mistreatment and that allegations of violent arrest should be evaluated as part of an independent and impartial investigation.

The incident comes as the issue of mandatory hijab remains a hot topic in Iran following months of nationwide protests in 2022 and 2023 that erupted following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.

The 22-year-old Kurdish woman was arrested in Tehran for allegedly not fully complying with the strict dress code in place since shortly after the 1979 revolution. Hundreds of people died during the protests.

France, which had adopted more confrontational rhetoric toward the Iranian establishment during the protests than most Western countries in calling them a “revolution,” said Tuesday it was “closely following” the student’s case.

“I salute the courage of this young woman who demonstrated her resistance and became an icon of the women’s struggle in Iran,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told France 2 broadcaster.