Iran has scrapped its morality police after more than two months of protests triggered by the arrest of Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating the country's strict female dress code, local media said Sunday.
Women-led protests, labelled "riots" by the authorities, have swept Iran since the 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin died on September 16, three days after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.
"Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary" and have been abolished, Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.
According to the article, he made his remark in response to a participant's question about "why the morality police were being shut down" during a religious conference.
Under the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the morality police, formally known as the Gasht-e Ershad or "Guidance Patrol," were established to "spread the culture of modesty and hijab," the required female head covering.
In 2006, the unit started patrolling. A day after Montazeri stated that "both parliament and the judiciary are working (on the matter)" of whether the law requiring women to wear their heads needed to be altered, it was announced that they would be abolished.
In televised remarks on Saturday, President Ebrahim Raisi noted that while Iran's republican and Islamic roots were firmly rooted in the constitution, "there are means of executing the constitution that might be flexible."
Four years after the 1979 revolution that established the Islamic Republic of Iran and toppled the US-backed monarchy, the hijab was made obligatory.
Before beginning to crack down and arrest women 15 years ago, morality police officials first offered warnings.
Men in green uniforms and women wearing black chadors, which cover their upper bodies and heads, typically made up the vice squads. Even among candidates for the presidency, there has always been disagreement about how the units' roles have changed.
As women began to frequently be seen wearing tight jeans and loose, vibrant headscarves, clothing conventions gradually shifted, especially under previous moderate president Hassan Rouhani.
However, his successor, the fervently conservative Raisi, demanded in July of this year that "all state institutions be mobilised to execute the headscarf law." At the time, Raisi claimed that "by promoting corruption," "the enemies of Iran and Islam have assaulted the cultural and religious values of society."
Despite this, many women continued to flout the laws by donning tight-fitting clothing or allowing their headscarves to fall onto their shoulders, especially in large cities and towns.
Saudi Arabia, a rival nation in the region to Iran, also used morality police to enforce female clothing requirements and other laws. The force there has been neglected since 2016 as the Sunni Muslim nation attempts to shed its stern reputation.
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