Iran releases 22,000 demonstrators

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has pardoned 22,628 people arrested during demonstrations that followed the death in police custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini last year. This is a total of 82,656 Iranian prisoners and individuals facing charges in the mass amnesty, which marks the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Judiciary head Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei clarified that those receiving pardons were not accused of theft or violent crime, spying, or membership in certain groups. Opposition groups and activists are demanding that Iranian officials be held accountable for what the deputy director of the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran described as "the arbitrary imprisonments of tens of thousands." Iran accused the US and Israel of fomenting the unrest that erupted in September after Amini, detained by the so-called morality police for wearing an "improper" hijab, collapsed and died while in custody. Amini's death became a rallying cry for often violent demonstrations which Iran argues were deliberately orchestrated to provoke a police crackdown that the West could use as justification for more sanctions against the Islamic Republic. An EU effort to follow the US by declaring the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization was scuttled at the last minute in January.