A second woman has been arrested in Iran for protesting against the mandatory law that civilians must cover themselves with a hijab while out in public.
Like the first woman detained, she took off her headscarf and held it aloft using a stick on the side of a busy road in Tehran.
The women are part of a wider movement in Iran resisting the Islamic law as social media posts saw a slew of women acting in solidarity by removing their hijabs.
An unidentified woman stands on a snowy street holding her headscarf in the air using a stick
Two women stand on pillar boxes in a carbon copy of the protest which got two women arrested
Freed: The woman broke Iranian Islamic law when she took off her headscarf in public in the capital of Tehran in December
Standing on the same telecoms box as the first woman arrested – Vida Movahed – the second woman was detained this morning.
She has been identified locally as Nagres Hosseini, according to The Guardian, on the same day Movahed was released having been arrested last month.
Talking of the latest wave of protests, Movahed’s lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh told the newspaper Hosseini had been stood on the box for 10 minutes before she was arrested by a plain-clothed officer.
Two people filming her were also detained and she said of the recent protests: ‘Her message is clear, girls and women are fed up with forced [hijab]. Let women decide themselves about their own body.’
Movahed, a young mother jailed for protesting the Islamic dresscode enforced on women in Iran, was released today more than a month after her arrest.
The 31-year-old, known as The Girl In Enghelab Street, was arrested after she took off her head scarf and held it in the air while standing on a pillar box in central Tehran last month.
Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who had been investigating the case, said officials had confirmed that the woman had been freed over the weekend.
A video showing her calmly waving her white hijab tied to a stick above the crowds in the Iranian capital, went viral on social media.
According to reports, the mother-of-one, was arrested shortly after her protest on December 27, and taken to a detention centre with her 20-month-old daughter.
Several eyewitnesses said that law enforcement officials arrested the woman on the spot, and transferred her to a nearby detention center known as Kalantari 148, according to Amnesty International.
Iranian journalist and human rights campaigner Masih Alinejad first broke the news of her release, citing friends of the woman.
She tweeted: ‘The woman with the white shawl has been freed, according to her friends.’
Ms Alinejad is the founder of the White Wednesdays and My Stealthy Freedom movements, which fights compulsory hijab in Iran.
Ms Sotoudeh later confirmed this, writing on her Facebook page that she had seen official documents that confirmed that the 31-year-old had returned home this weekend.
Missing: The 31-year-old was praised after a video of her protest went viral on social media, but she was reportedly arrested shortly afterwards
Join the force: After initially being shared by human rights campaigners in Iran, the fight to find out the fate of the Girl of Enghelab Street went global
Thousands of social media users shared messages of support after her disappearance, dubbing her the ‘Girl of Enghelab Street’ after the area in central Tehran where she staged the protest.
Iranian activists started a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #WhereIsShe, demanding that the government reveal what happened to her.
The campaign eventually went global both on and offline, with protesters at the recent Women’s March in the U.S. waving placards with the slogan.
The woman, who MailOnline is choosing not to name, was protesting Iran’s Islamic law, which requires women to wear a headscarf and long clothes that cover the arms and legs.
Support: Two participants in the Women’s March in Boston, US hold up placards with the campaign slogan
Breaking the rules can bring fines of up to 500,000 rials ($12) and up to two months in prison.
President Hassan Rouhani, who came to power in 2013 promising a more moderate stance, has previously said it is not the job of police to enforce religious rules such as those forcing women to cover their hair.
But in April 2016, officials said there were 7,000 undercover morality police reporting on things like ‘bad hijab’ – a blanket term usually referring to un-Islamic dress by women.
Figures are rarely given, but Tehran’s traffic police said in late 2015 they had dealt with 40,000 cases of bad hijab in cars, where women often let their headscarves drop around their necks.
These cases generally led to fines and a temporary impounding of the vehicle.
The Girl of Enghelab Street: What she stood for
The woman who took her hijab off in public and waved it like a white flag in central Tehran, was protesting the Islamic dress code enforced on women in Iran.
The woman, reportedly a 31-year-old mother, broke the law by exposing her hair in public, risking arrest and fines.
The Girl of Enghelab Street, nicknamed so because of the name of the road where she took her head-scarf off in protest, has spurred many other women in Iran to do the same.
Missing: The unnamed woman was taking part in a women’s movement called White Wednesdays, which protests the enforcing of strict Islamic dress codes in Iran
Since her protest on December 27, she has become a symbol for Iranian women’s fight against compulsory hijab, with many sharing the video of her protest on social media and illustrations of her brave stand.
She has become the ‘poster child’ for the White Wednesdays movement, which encourages Iranian women and those who support their plight to take off their hijab, and was started by journalist and campaigner Masih Alinejad.
White is one of the most common colours of headscarves in Iran, which only allows ‘modest’ shades such as white, brown or black.
Another campaign fighting against the enforced hijab in Iran set up by Ms Alinejad is My Stealthy Freedom.
It is ‘dedicated to Iranian women inside the country who want to share their “stealthily” taken photos without the veil’, and aim to be a ‘living archive’ of their fight.
Movement: Supporters have been sharing graphic illustrations of the Girl of Enghelab Street, painting a picture of her as an iconic fighter for women’s rights in Iran
It sees women post ‘stealth’ photos or videos of themselves where they have dared to take off their hijab, to spread the message and protest.
Some women film themselves walking down public streets without their headscarf to show to the world the amount of abuse they face if they dare show their hair.
Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has required women to wear the Islamic headscarf in public.
The Islamic code also forbids women touching, dancing or singing with men outside their families.
Women are only allowed to show their face, hands and feet in public and are supposed to wear only modest colours.
Leader: The Girl of Enghelab Street is being depicted as Moses in the Bible, parting the Red Sea
This image shared on social media shows a person in an unknown location having built a snow statue of the Girl of Enghelab Street