Iran has announced that it is resuming the activities of its Guidance Patrols (Gashteh Ersherd), which crack down on women’s dress codes under Islamic law.

The Guidance Patrol, also known as the “religious police,” has been linked to the “Mahsa Amini mystery case” that sparked widespread anti-government protests last year.

“They will resume their activities to crack down on women not wearing hijabs in public and arrest anyone who disobeys their orders,” police spokesman Saeed Montazer Almechdi said on Saturday, according to state-run IRNA news agency.

Plainclothes officers will be enforcing the dress code on the city’s main streets, and posting photos of women without hijabs online will also be punishable, Almehdi explained.

Amini was arrested by the Guidance Patrol on September 13 last year in downtown Tehran for not wearing a hijab properly.

While being questioned at a police station, she suddenly collapsed and was rushed to a hospital, where she died on the 16th of the same month. 카지노사이트킴 The anti-government protests sparked by the incident lasted over nine months.

According to human rights organizations such as the Human Rights Activist News Agency of Iran (HRANA), at least 500 people were killed and more than 20,000 arrested in the anti-government protests.

The Guidance Patrol was created under hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (in office from August 2005-August 2013) and began cracking down on modesty in 2006, including inspecting the wearing of hijabs (a cloth worn by Muslim women to cover their heads).

As anti-government protests intensified last December, authorities hinted at the possibility of abolishing the guided patrols, but did not actually do away with them.