14 people, including former mayor, arrested in connection with Metro Bridge collapse in Abadan

The Iranian judiciary announced the arrest of 14 people in connection with the collapse of the Abadan Metropole building.

Masoud Setayishi, a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary, said on Tuesday, June 8, that four of these individuals were former mayors and the rest of those arrested were people who were responsible for the engineering sector in Abadan.

Without naming those arrested, the Judiciary Spokesperson announced the positions of some of them as follows: former mayor, head of the engineering system, project supervisor engineer, mayor of District One, head of the Municipality of District One, head of the Technical and Development Deputy, deputy for infrastructure and transportation affairs, and technical deputy for the municipality.

According to Mohammad Javad Razavi, head of the Ahvaz City Council's Investigation, Supervision and Inspection Commission, one of the detainees is the head of the Ahvaz Municipality's Investment and Partnerships Organization.

Iranian news agencies also reported that Gholamreza Shariati, the former governor of Khuzestan, whose departure from the country was announced on Saturday, has returned to Iran.

Following the publication of this news, the Mizan News Agency, affiliated with the judiciary, announced: "So far, no report has been sent to the provincial judiciary regarding the possible or definite guilt of the former governor of Khuzestan regarding Metropol."

The 11-story Metropole building collapsed on June 20, killing at least 43 people.

Ehsan Abbaspour, the special governor of Abadan, announced the latest death toll from the incident on Tuesday, June 8, and told the state news agency IRNA that debris removal is continuing to find possible bodies and prepare the area for the demolition of the Metropol building.

Following this incident, the people of Abadan and a number of other cities in Iran held protest rallies for several consecutive nights and chanted anti-government slogans.

After the collapse of the Metropole in Abadan, a number of Islamic Republic officials warned about the unsafe nature of similar buildings in other cities.

On Tuesday, June 1, Mehdi Chamran, the head of Tehran City Council, referring to the existing list of 129 high-risk buildings in Tehran, said that some authorities are opposed to making this list public, without saying who these authorities are.

Ebrahim Qanbari, head of the Ahvaz Fire Department, announced on Monday, June 6, that 409 unsafe buildings had been identified in Ahvaz, saying: "Mahziar City Center and a number of hospitals in Ahvaz are in a much more serious situation than the Metropol."

He added: "The current situation in Mahziar City Center in Ahvaz is a disaster, and if the parking lot of Mahziar City Center collapses, we will have two thousand deaths."

Mojtaba Abdullahi, the governor of Alborz, also called for the formation of a working group to identify unsafe buildings in the province.

Abbas Jafari, CEO of the Qom Fire Department, announced on June 2 that there are many "metropolitan" buildings in the city of Qom, and that there are many commercial and medical buildings that lack the necessary safety features, especially in relation to fire.

At the same time, Masoud Aghaziarti, CEO of the Arak Fire Department, announced that the organization has issued more than 500 warnings for unsafe buildings since three years ago.

According to Ali Salehi, Tehran's Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor, fire department managers have issued about 930 warnings and safety instructions to the Tehran General Directorate of Education in the past two years, but the department has not taken appropriate action.

In recent days, government officials in Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Mashhad, Arak, and Qazvin have also expressed concern in similar statements about the existence of unsafe and dangerous buildings in these cities.

Critics of the Iranian government consider government corruption within the structure of the Islamic Republic to be the main factor behind such incidents.

Source: Voice of America