Iran’s supreme leader vows death penalty to those guilty of poisoning schoolgirls

Any culprit found responsible for poisonings at girls’ schools will face the death penalty, Iran’s supreme leader said amid growing public concern over the unexplained sickening of hundreds of students.

“If the poisoning of students is proven, those behind this crime should be sentenced to capital punishment and there will be no amnesty for them,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

It was the first time the 83-year-old leader had spoken publicly about the spate of reported incidents that started last November affecting thousands of schoolgirls. At dozens of schools, girls have reported breathlessness, nausea, tingling extremities and even partial paralysis, sometimes after smelling a strange odour. Nearly all of those affected have quickly recovered.

The unexplained incidents have occurred amid a security crackdown in which young girls have been targeted for their role in leading nationwide anti-government protests, leading some regime critics to conclude that security forces of the Islamic republic could be covertly attacking girls’ schools.

But some observers have suggested that a mass psychogenic illness – sometimes known as mass hysteria – caused by an atmosphere of stress and fear could explain the suspected poisonings.

The students appeared to have been deliberately targeted though, according to Ayatollah Khamenei.

“Some people are undoubtedly involved in this crime,” he said.

“The country’s officials must earnestly investigate the matter of the poisoning of students. This is a huge crime, which is unforgivable,” he added.

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Iran’s Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said over the weekend that “suspicious samples” had been gathered by investigators, without elaborating. He called on the public to remain calm and accused unnamed enemies of inciting fear to undermine the Islamic Republic.

A string of similar incidents in neighbouring Afghanistan – where unlike in Iran there is a history of opposition to women’s education – was never proven to have been caused by poisoning, with the World Health Organization suggesting in 2012 that it appeared to be a mass psychogenic illness.

Original News : https://news.yahoo.com/iran-supreme-leader-vows-death-134349879.html