AFP, Washington, July 1, 2009 – The White House on Wednesday dismissed as ’misinformation’ a reported Iranian police claim that the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, who emerged as an emblem of the political uprising, was staged.
Neda became an emblem of protests against President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad’s disputed re-election, after a graphic Internet video showing her final moments flashed around the world.
’I think that is the ongoing campaign of misinformation about what’s going on,’ White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said when asked about the claim.
’I think the notion that the death of an innocent woman would be staged is — even with them, it’s shocking.’
Iran’s police chief Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moghaddam was earlier quoted by Tehran-based news channel Press TV as saying that the death of the young woman was a ’prearranged scenario.’
The police chief accused Arash Hejazi, a doctor who says he tried to save Neda’s life in her final moments, of fanning the flames of the western media hype, the TV station said on its website.
In a press conference last week, President Barack Obama brought up the video of the woman bleeding to death after being shot during some of the first big street protests against the Iranian leadership.
’It’s heartbreaking, and I think that anybody who sees it knows that there’s something fundamentally unjust about that.
’I think that when a young woman gets shot on the street when she gets out of her car, that’s a problem,’ Obama said on June 23, in his most robust comments until then on the Iranian political crisis.
Ahamdinejad has called for a probe into the death of Neda, whose killing generated an international outcry, saying there had been fabricated reports about the incident and ’widespread propaganda’ by the foreign media.