Climber Elnaz Rekabi on house arrest in Iran after competing without hijab
Elnaz Rekabi, a 33-year-old Iranian professional rock climber, has reportedly been placed under house arrest after competing in South Korea without a Hijab.
Rekabi returned to her family in Iran despite reports she would be jailed for violating her country's head-covering law for women. She was greeted by a large crowd at Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran when she arrived Wednesday morning without a headscarf, but a black baseball cap and hoodie.
The crowd cheered "Elnaz is a heroine" as she headed to reunite with her family.
Sources in multiple reports say that Rekabi’s phone was confiscated after arriving in her hometown of Zanjan in northwest Iran.
A source now tells BBC that authorities threatened to take her family's property if she did not make the statement.
BBC reports that it is normal for Iran to require some form of collateral from athletes who leave the country for international competition. A source said that in Rekabi’s case, the climber was forced to hand over a $35,000 check along with full power of attorney to Iran's Mountaineering Federation to sell her family's property.
The sources told BBC that Iranian authorities have her on house arrest but say she is “staying at home because she is in need of rest.”
Protests for Mahsa Amini
While Rekabi initially apologized and said that her hijab had fallen off “inadvertently,” some saw her appearance in the climbing competition without a hijab as a show of support for the women-led protests occuring in Iran.
Upon landing on Wednesday, Rekabi gave an interview to Iranian state media in which she repeated claims made in a text-only post that appeared the previous day on her Instagram account. She wrote:
“Due to bad timing, and the unanticipated call for me to climb the wall, my head covering inadvertently came off.”
The unrest was sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested in September by Iran's morality police for allegedly not wearing her headscarf correctly.
Iranian officials say she died of a heart attack after being detained, but her family told CBS News they believe she was tortured and then murdered in custody.
