Shocking video shows a suspect pulling at the headscarves of Muslim women in west London this week in which appeared to be unprovoked attacks.
Several clips showed women wearing coverings targeted by an unseen videographer in Kensington, shared on Instagram on Saturday. One version of the video was seen over 800,000 times by Sunday afternoon.
Bahar Mahroo circulated the video online and wrote: ‘Just as you take democracy away from us in Iran and force us to wear headscarves, since we have democracy in this country, we’ll pull off those very headscarves from you.’
The comments were re-shared with unfounded allegations Mahroo was involved. She ‘unequivocally’ denied personal involvement and said CCTV footage would corroborate her innocence.
It came at a heightened period of tensions for Iranian diaspora with millions heading to the polls in Iran on Friday to vote in presidential elections widely regarded a ‘sham’ and huge protests calling for regime change across Europe.
Iran has seen huge demonstrations erupt in recent years against the perceived hardening of ultraconservative positions and crackdowns on liberal dissent following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested by Iran’s so-called ‘morality police’ for alleged improper wearing of a headscarf in 2022.
An unknown suspect was seen grabbing at the headscarves of women in Kensington
Women standing on High Street Kensington appeared to become victims of random attacks
Two separate videos shared online showed women wearing scarves targeted in Kensington as bystanders watched on.
Dilly Hussain, an editor at 5Pillars, a British Muslim news website, shared the videos with Mahroo’s post and claimed she had ‘admitted to pulling the hijab off Muslim women in London’.
Mahroo said she was only sharing news and ‘unequivocally’ denied her involvement in pulling the scarves from women in London.
Some Muslim women choose to wear head coverings in line with Islamic customs about observing modesty, while others claim women are repressed by rules on how to dress.
Earlier this month, Mahroo was attacked by supporters of the Iranian regime outside the Dewan Al-Kafeel community centre in Wembley during a protest at the memorial service for late Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi.
Mahroo told the Jewish Chronicle that minutes after arriving she and Navid Bavi, 32, were attacked by men dressed in black.
‘I cried out, telling them to stop. But then they sexually assaulted me, trying to grab my breasts,’ she told the outlet.
Bavi was seen in horrifying footage lying unconscious after being beaten and thrown to the floor.
He was reportedly beaten so badly that he ‘may never walk again’, according to the report.
Iranians went to the polls this week to find a replacement for 63-year-old President Raisi following his death in a helicopter accident in May.
But with the elections widely regarded to be a sham, large scale protests have been organised around the world calling for total regime change and an election boycott.
Thousands of adjacent rallies have taken place since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022.
Amini was arrested in Tehran, supposedly for opposing mandatory hijab laws in Iran.
She fell into a coma after her arrest and died in suspicious circumstances in hospital in Tehran on 16 September 2022.
The Islamic Republic’s officials told media that Amini suffered a heart attack while detained by ‘morality police’, denying reports she had been beaten.
Leaked medical scans and assertions of police brutality led observers to believe she had died at the hands of the police.
Iran witnessed its largest protests since at least 2009 in response to her death, amid a clash between a state tending towards stricter observation of inferred religious law and a more liberal Iranian community.
Twitter user Bahar Mahroo denied being involved following widespread allegations
It was not clear what caused the suspect to attack the pedestrians in west London this week
Two separate videos shared online showed women wearing scarves targeted in Kensington as bystanders watched on
Wearing a veil has been mandatory in Iran since 1983, reflecting the new values of the regime assuming power in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
The revolution gained momentum from discontent with the previous pro-Western Reza Shah Pahlavi, abruptly ending a period of relative liberalism spanning several decades.
Pahlavi had mandated the other way, banning the wearing of the veil in public altogether in 1936 – a new vision of modernity influenced by Turkey’s reformist Ataturk.
For much of the 20th century, however, women were nominally free to choose whether they would wear the veil – though some were restricted by male members of the family.
MailOnline contacted the Metropolitan Police for comment.
MailOnline was unable to reach Bahar Mahroo for comment.
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