Women Being Sent to the Gallows in Alarming Numbers in Iran

Many Were Child Brides Hanged for Murder of Abusive Husbands From Whom There Was No Protection 

Growing Political Executions in Iran Now Also Include Women

December 18, 2024 — Amidst a huge surge in executions in the Islamic Republic—862 so far in 2024, the highest per capita execution rate globally—the Iranian authorities are now increasingly including women in those it sends to the gallows.

Since the start of 2024, Iran has executed at least 29 women. More executions of women may have taken place that are unknown.

These women are often young and, like many of those executed in Iran, often members of minority communities. What stands them apart from other executed prisoners is that many of these women were victims of child marriage (and thus child rape), domestic violence, and gender-related crimes and injustices, who committed murder as the only way to escape intolerable abuse. 

“The Islamic Republic allows girls to be married off at 13, and does not protect them from violent and abusive husbands—and then sentences them to death after they commit desperate acts to escape the crimes committed against them,” said Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

“This is layer upon layer of crimes against the women of Iran,” said Ghaemi. “The judicial authorities make no attempt to situate these women’s crimes in the context in which they are committed—deep and systemic violence and abuse of women and girls, from which there is no legal protection or escape.”

Women are also increasingly being sentenced to death for political offenses, amidst an alarming overall surge in politically motivated executions in the Islamic Republic. The Iranian authorities have increasingly used the death penalty against protesters, activists, and dissidents in order to intimidate the population and silence dissent in the country—especially amongst its women—in the wake of the Woman Life Freedom protests that erupted across Iran in 2022-2023.

This year, three female political prisoners—Pakhshan Azizi, Varisheh Moradi, and Sharifeh Mohammadi—were sentenced to death. Azizi, a Kurdish women’s rights activist and social worker, and Mohammadi, a labor activist, were sentenced to death in July for their peaceful activism. Moradi, a Kurdish political activist, received her death sentence in November. While Mohammadi’s sentence was overturned on October 12, Azizi and Moradi remain at risk.

It is no accident that two of these women—Azizi and Moradi—are members of the Kurdish minority. Minorities in Iran are consistently singled out for disproportionate application of the death penalty, and women minorities are subjected to especially harsh intersectional persecution—political activism on their part is treated as a national security “crime” that receives harsh prison terms, if not the death sentence.

All of these executions are carried out within a deeply flawed judicial system. Systemic issues include the routine use of torture to extract forced “confessions” and the flagrant denial of due process and fair trial rights—including access to an independent lawyer.

In August, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for an immediate moratorium on the death penalty in Iran, and in September, UN experts urged the Iranian authorities to halt the use of the death penalty due to serious violations of fair trial and due process rights.

CHRI urgently calls on the UN and Member States to:

• Urge Iran to impose an immediate moratorium on executions.
• Impose human rights sanctions on the judges handing down unjust death sentences.
• Demand that Iran increases the legal age of marriage to internationally accepted norms.
• Urge the authorities to engage Iranian civil society in a review of domestic violence and the needed policy and legal reforms to protect women and contextualize these crimes.
• Urge the authorities to allocate resources for the establishment of intervention mechanisms, safe houses, and educational initiatives to reduce domestic violence.

Activist: “​​I was cellmates with these women…99% of them were forced to marry under the age of 18.”

In a December 9, 2024, interview with CHRI, former political prisoner and anti-death penalty campaigner Atena Daemi recounted the stories of incarcerated women:

“​​I was a cellmate with these women—once for 3.5 months in Qarchak Prison [south of Tehran] and on another occasion for 11.5 months in Lakan Prison in Rasht [northern Iran]. I heard their stories, and I can say with certainty that 99% of them were women who were forced to marry under the age of 18. 

“The women in Lakan Prison were mostly from villages and small towns far from the provincial capital in Rasht. They had been marginalized their entire lives and knew nothing about their rights. They were forced to marry by their families due to customs and Sharia law. Most had no understanding of marriage at all and were forced to marry men much older than themselves, and most were subjected to severe domestic violence. These women were deprived of all their rights and were forced to stay home and have children very early, often with a very small age gap between them and their children.

“Most of these women endured continuous domestic violence as they went through childhood and adolescence and grew up. To escape this situation, they tried to get divorced, but they do not succeed because they do not have the right to divorce. [Divorce is highly restricted and extraordinarily difficult for women to obtain in Iran, and if a woman leaves the marital home, she forfeits financial maintenance and custody of her children.]

“There are no laws that protect women, and the family does not provide any support at all. At the same time, because they had children, getting a divorce became more difficult and they had to endure hardship for the sake of the children. But for many of them, tolerance became impossible, and at some point, and in the midst of a dispute, without any prior intention, they killed their husbands.”

In one case, Akhtar Ghorbanlou, a young woman who, at the age of 17, was forcibly married to a man 18 years older than her, was later accused of killing her husband by poisoning him. Trapped in an abusive marriage, she did not have any legal protection and faced a judicial system that ignored her circumstances. Akhtar was sentenced to death for “premeditated murder,” and her execution was carried out in October 2024 in Ahar Prison, northwest Iran.

Daemi also recounted the stories of the abuses these incarcerated women endured in Iranian prisons, where they are exploited as cheap labor and coerced into complying with the prison guards’ demands under the threat of execution:

“Another important point about women who were imprisoned for years awaiting execution was the abuse of these women by the prison system. The prison guards and officials forced these women to do many things by threatening them with execution. They abused them as cheap labor. Most of these women were from very poor backgrounds and received no support from their families or government institutions.”

An overwhelming majority of executions in Iran, including those of women, are for drug-related offenses. This is a violation of international law, as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (Iran is a signatory), which requires that capital punishment only be applied in the “most serious” crimes. Drug offenses do not meet this threshold. Daemi told CHRI:

“Regarding women sentenced to death for drug-related charges, we should note that all of these women were sentenced due to extremely difficult economic conditions and also because drug cartels use women as the best option for transporting drugs. These drug cartels exploited their position to gain women’s cooperation by offering them money. I saw a large number of women accused of drug crimes who had transported drugs for the first time. In Qarchak Prison [south of Tehran], I met a woman who had implanted several kilos of drugs in her uterus for a very small amount of money and was arrested and sentenced to death. Or in Lakan Prison in Rasht, I met a woman who had agreed to bring 15 kilos of drugs from Gilan to Tehran also for a small amount of money and was arrested and sentenced to death.

“The most important thing about the death penalty, especially in drug cases, is that execution has not been a deterrent in any way. I met a woman in prison who had 17 family members executed for drug offenses, including her father and two uncles, but she said that she had no choice but to continue the same path as her family.”

A list of the 29 executions of women in Iran that are known as of December 18, 2024, follows below. Many executions are not reported by state authorities, thus the actual number could be much higher than what is documented by human rights organizations.

Known Executions of Women in 2024

• On January 21, 2024, Hajar Atabaki, a 41-year-old woman from Tabriz, northwest Iran, was executed in the Central Prison of Qazvin, for drug-related offenses. The execution was reported in the media about a month later.
• On January 31, 2024, Zahra Nazarian, a resident of Sabzevar in northeast Iran, was executed in the city’s Central Prison. She was convicted of murdering her sister-in-law.
• On March 21, 2024, the death sentence of an unnamed woman from Jolfa, northeast Iran, was carried out in the Central Prison of Tabriz. The woman was executed along with her husband, for drug-related offenses.
• In April 2024, three women were executed: Marjan Hajizadeh in Zanjan, northwest Iran, for drug-related offenses; an unidentified Baluch woman in the eastern city of Birjand also for drug-related offenses; and Soraya Mohammadi in Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, for murder.
• In May 2024, four women were executed: Fariba Mohammad-Zehi in the Central Prison of Kerman, eastern Iran, for drug-related offenses; “Razieh,” 31, in Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad, northeast Iran, for murder; Parvin Mousavi, 50, in the Central Prison of Orumiyeh, northwest Iran, for drug-related crimes, and Fatemeh Abdollahi, 27, in the Central Prison of Neishabur, northeast Iran, for murder. 
• In July 2024, five unnamed women were executed: On July 21, a woman by the last name “Mahmoudinia” was executed in Shiraz, southern Iran, for murder. On July 23, three women were executed in Birjand, eastern Iran, on drug-related charges. On July 27, an unnamed woman was executed in Khorramabad, southern Iran, on drug-related charges.
• In October 2024, five women were executed: Zahra Faizi and Nastaran Firouzi in Tabriz; Akhtar Ghorbanlou in Ahar, northwest Iran; and two unnamed women in Hamadan and Karaj.
• In November 2024, four women were executed: Mahrokh Khani in Tabriz; Fariba Maleki Shiravand in Khorramabad, and two unnamed women in Rasht and Karaj.
• On December 2, 2024, three women were executed: Farideh Jafarzadeh, approximately 50 years old, and 60-year-old Alieh Kavkarizadeh, in Ilam, western Iran, for murder, and Farkhondeh Allahmoradi in Isfahan, central Iran, also for murder.
• On December 5, 2024, Ameneh Alipour, 37, was executed in Zanjan, northwest Iran.
• On December 15, 2024, an unnamed woman was executed in Yazd, central Iran, for drug-related crimes.

“The pervasive and unlawful use of the death penalty in Iran—and its surging use against women—demands immediate global action,” said Ghaemi. “This escalating crisis reveals a deeply entrenched system of violent injustice that continues to target vulnerable groups.”