Two marathon organizers arrested in Iran over women running without hijabs

TEHRAN, Iran — Two of the main organizers of a marathon in Iran have been arrested after pictures circulated on social media showing women competing without the mandatory headscarf.

“One of those arrested is an official in the Kish free trade zone,” the Islamic republic’s judiciary said in a statement Saturday on its official website Mizan Online, referring to the area on the island off Iran’s southern coast that offers tax exemptions and customs duty relief for businesses and foreign companies.

The second person arrested “works for the private company that organized the race,” the judiciary added.

The marathon was held Friday on Kish Island and drew more than 5,000 participants, local media reported.

Images of female runners also spread online. Some showed them documenting the marathon and posing with their medals after they finished the 26.2-mile race. Some were without a hijab, while others wore headband-style coverings that sat across the forehead and scalp but did not conceal their ponytails or braids.

Right after the race the island’s public prosecutor told Mizan Online that warnings about the need to follow national laws, religious norms and professional rules in holding the marathon had been ignored.

The organizers “did not take these warnings seriously” and violated “public decency” by allowing women to compete without the legally required headscarf, or hijab, Ali Salemizadeh said.

Iran’s Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, a conservative-dominated body that sets the country’s cultural and educational policies, also criticized the race in a statement reported by the state-run broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).

Calling the behavior “shame breaking and organized,” it said security and judicial bodies should identify and deal firmly with such movements to prevent similar cases from happening again.

The hijab has been compulsory for women in Iran since the early 1980s, accompanied by stringent dress code regulations mandating modest, loose-fitting clothing in public.

However, enforcement of these laws has been less consistent after nationwide protests following the death of Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16, 2022. The 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman died in a hospital three days after she was detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly not adhering to the rules on headscarves for women and clothing restrictions.

The intense crackdown that followed has largely stifled the protest movement, with new detentions and legislation.

But in an interview with NBC News earlier this year, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said forcing women to wear the hijab and recent crackdowns in his country were wrong. “Human beings have a right to choose,” he said.

And speaking at Beheshti University in the capital, Tehran, on Sunday, Pezeshkian said that hijab regulations shouldn’t be imposed through coercion, according to the IRIB.

“The issue of hijab is not a simple matter and cannot be resolved through compulsion or confrontation,” the broadcaster quoted Pezeshkian as saying. He added that the government must act “persuasively,” rather than rely on force.

However, his more moderate stance has sparked backlash from more hard-line factions in the Iranian government, a theocratic structure that is ultimately ruled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Amin Khodadadi reported from Tehran and Elmira Aliieva from London.