The Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran stated that she had a heart attack at a police station, collapsed, and fell into a coma before being transferred to a hospital.

[4][5] However, eyewitnesses, including women who were detained with Amini, reported that she was severely beaten and that she died as a result of police brutality,[6][7][8] which was denied by the Iranian authorities.

[9] The assertions of police brutality, in addition to leaked medical scans,[10] led some observers to believe Amini had a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke due to head injuries received after her arrest.

[14][15] Amnesty International reported that Iranian security forces had fired into groups with live ammunition and killed protesters by beating them with batons.

[16] Amini's death ignited the global Woman, Life, Freedom movement, rooted in her Kurdish background, which demands the end of compulsory hijab laws and other forms of discrimination and oppression against women in Iran.

On 7 March, less than a month after the revolution, then recently named Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini decreed the hijab (Islamic headscarf) to be mandatory for all women in workplaces.

This has prompted the Guidance Patrol, Iran's morality police, to launch intermittent campaigns to verbally admonish or violently[22][23][24][25][26][27] arrest and "re-educate" women they considered to be wearing the hijab incorrectly.

[68] On 16 September, journalist Niloofar Hamedi (later arrested) broke the story of her coma, posting to Twitter a photo of Amini's father and grandmother crying and embracing in the hospital hallway.

In an 18 September letter, Doctor Hossein Karampour (the top medical official in Hormozgan province), pointed out that such symptoms "do not match the reasons given by some authorities who declared the cause to be a heart attack... (they are instead consistent with) a head injury and the resulting bleeding.

"[76] This was also confirmed by alleged medical scans of her skull, leaked by hacktivists, showing bone fracture, hemorrhage, and brain edema.

[failed verification][79] According to Iran International, the Iranian government was forging fake medical records for Amini, showing that she had a history of heart disease.

Iranian authorities had charged that Mahsa was wearing immodest clothes when arrested; Amjad rejected this claim, stating that she always wore a long overcoat.

[83][84][85] The Amini family's lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, told the Etemad online news website that "respectable doctors" believe Mahsa was hit while in custody.

[93] In a report released on 8 March 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council concluded that Amini's death was caused by physical violence she suffered while in morality police custody.

[94][95] The report found Iran responsible for her death and claimed the government had attempted to hide the truth and intimidate Amini's family rather than conduct an impartial investigation.

[98] In early October the Legal Medical Organization of the Irans judiciary reasoned Amini had died due to underlying disease stemming from brain surgery she had at the age of eight.

[107] On 3 October, in his first statement since the outbreak of the protests, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed the widespread unrest as "riots", and likewise tried to cast it as a foreign plot.

[121][122][120] A spokesperson for Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights group, stated that "the security institutions forced the Amini family to hold the funeral without any ceremony to prevent tensions.

[131] In an interview with BBC Persian, the father accused the authorities of lying about her death and noted that every time he was asked how he thinks she died, his response was mysteriously cut from local news broadcasts.

He stressed that the authorities refused to let him see his daughter at the clinic, and that when he finally saw her body before the funeral, it was completely wrapped except for the face and feet, which had mysterious bruises.

[197] The European Parliament proudly stands with the brave and defiant who continue to fight for equality, dignity and freedom in Iran.

By choosing them as laureates for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2023, this House remembers their struggle and continues to honour all those who have paid the ultimate price for liberty.According to their lawyer, Amini's family were prevented from flying to the award ceremony after their passports were confiscated despite holding valid visas.

[198] On 15 and 16 September 2023, security forces were positioned in Tehran and other cities like Saqqez the birth-place of Mahsa Jina Amini as Iran marked one year since her death.

[199] Amini's father was detained while exiting the family home in the western town of Saqqez and then released after being warned not to hold the memorial service.

Iranians abroad staged a demonstration in Brussels on Friday and more were expected to be held elsewhere in Europe, in addition to Canada and the United States.

The US, along with the European Union and the United Kingdom, separately announced new sanctions on a number of Iranian officials and entities on the eve of Amini's death anniversary.

In the months since her death, tens of thousands of ordinary Iranians—led by other brave Iranian women—have come together to protest with a simple message: "Women, life, freedom".

Today, the United States announced new sanctions against 29 Iranian individuals and entities involved in repression and violence against protesters, prisoner abuse, and censorship.On the second anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death, women in Iran are trying hard to appear in public without the mandatory hijab.

[207] A number of people and human right and civil activists were arrested, especially in Kurdish cities, and security measures were increased by the Iranian government police.

The 2024 film The Seed of the Sacred Fig, directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, is set in the midst of the death of Mahsa Amini and the 2022–2023 protests in Iran.