Imminent Risk of Execution of Kurdish Woman Activist After Grossly Unfair Trial

If Carried Out, Pakhshan Azizi Will Be First Woman Political Prisoner Hanged in Iran in 14 Years

Death Sentence Upheld Despite Torture, Evidence of Innocence of Charges

January 9, 2025 — The first woman political prisoner in 14 years in Iran is facing imminent execution, after a blatantly unfair appeal process that upheld her death sentence. If carried out, this will mark a grave escalation in the Islamic Republic’s unlawful use of the death penalty against its political opponents—and against women—and it should be met with an international outcry, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said today.

Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for Pakhshan Azizi, a 40-year-old Kurdish humanitarian worker and civil society advocate, following a prosecution riddled with coerced confessions, inadequate legal representation, severe due process violations, and court proceedings that ignored evidence of torture and evidence vindicating her of the alleged crimes.

“This is a shocking miscarriage of justice,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of CHRI. “The Iranian judiciary has blatantly ignored evidence submitted to the court that Pakhshan Azizi’s work in refugee camps was purely humanitarian and not linked to any political or armed activity.”

“This death sentence is yet another example of the Islamic Republic’s unlawful use of capital punishment to silence activists, especially members of minority communities, and to terrorize Iran’s women into submission,” Ghaemi said. “The world must urgently speak out before this woman is killed.”

CHRI calls on the UN, Member States, and human rights organizations worldwide to demand that the Iranian authorities immediately:

• Annul Pakhshan Azizi’s death sentence;
• Immediately halt all pending executions;
• Institute a moratorium on death sentences, given Iran’s egregious record of due process violations and other abuses of international law governing capital punishment. 

Lawyer: “The Supreme Court ignored the flaws in the investigation and paid no attention to evidence” 

According to Azizi’s lawyer, Amir Raesian, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence issued by Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, rejecting an appeal that pointed out numerous investigative flaws and a lack of credible evidence.

“Following the death sentence issued by Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran against Ms. Azizi, we filed an appeal. The appeal was heard by Branch 39 of the Supreme Court, and unfortunately, despite numerous objections to the case, the appeal was rejected and the death sentence was confirmed,” Raesian told Shargh newspaper on January 8.

“[The Supreme Court] ignored the flaws in the investigation and paid no attention to evidence that showed Ms. Azizi’s case does not merit the death sentence, and that her activities in refugee camps in northern Syria and other locations for people displaced by the war with ISIS, were peaceful activities that had no political dimensions and centered around providing aid to victims of ISIS attacks,” he added.

Violently Arrested, Tortured to Extract False “Confessions”

Azizi, who was born in Mahabad, northwestern Iran, and has a bachelor’s degree in social work from Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran, was violently arrested at her home in Tehran on August 4, 2023, by state security forces who threw her to the ground, hands tied behind her back, and held a gun to her head, according to her account. Her family members were also detained and later sentenced to one year in prison each for “assisting a criminal to escape trial and conviction.”

During her detention, Ms. Azizi was denied legal counsel, subjected to severe psychological and physical torture, including five months of solitary confinement and prolonged interrogation sessions designed to extract false confessions—a routine tactic used by the Islamic Republic to convict peaceful activists of bogus national security crimes.

In a letter published in July 2024, Azizi detailed the torture she was subjected to during her detention, including being subjected to mock executions.

“During interrogations, they hanged me multiple times, buried me 10 meters underground, then pulled me back up, only to label me as a broken and defeated individual…For the central authority, we [the Kurdish minority in Iran] are small, we don’t count, but for their decrees, we are the heaviest and greatest.

“Humiliation and threats filled the air in the worst physical and mental conditions resulting from prolonged hunger strikes and five months of solitary confinement (the most dreadful white torture) … The same cell where [I] had been held in 2009 for the same charges of ‘being Kurdish’ and ‘being a woman.’”

On July 23, 2024, Azizi was sentenced to death on the sham charge of “armed rebellion against the state” by Branch 26 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court and sentenced to four years in prison for alleged membership in the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an accusation which she and her lawyers have denied.

Ms. Azizi’s case stems from her humanitarian efforts in refugee camps in northern Syria and Iraq, where she provided aid to people displaced by the war with ISIS. Azizi’s lawyer had posted multiple letters from international civil society organizations active in the affairs of refugees in Syria’s Kurdish region that confirmed her work with them as a relief and social worker was non-political and focused solely on aiding victims of conflict.

Despite this, she was accused of “rebellion” under Article 287 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code.

Originally, she had been charged under Article 288, which does not include the punishment of death, but Judge Iman Afshari declared he was sentencing her in accordance with Article 287, underscoring the arbitrary and political motives driving her case.

“In Ms. Azizi’s case, the evidence presented against her was so unfounded that a careful examination would have cleared her of the rebellion charge. But unfortunately, no attention has been paid to it so far. Furthermore, despite the fact that innocence does not need to be proven, we presented credible evidence for it to the Supreme Court,” Raesian added.

Azizi was previously arrested in November 2009 during a gathering by students at Tehran University, protesting against politically motivated executions in Kurdistan, including the execution of 28-year-old Kurdish political prisoner Ehsan Fattahian.

In September 2024, CHRI, along with 25 other human rights organizations, issued a joint statement calling for the immediate revocation of her death sentence and her release.

Huge Surge in Executions, Increasingly Used Against Political Prisoners and Women 

The death sentence against Pakhshan Azizi, which takes place amidst a huge surge in executions in Iran (at least 901 people were reportedly executed in Iran in 2024), reflects two alarming trends in the Islamic Republic—protesters, activists, dissidents and other critics of the state are increasingly being executed after sham trials (a shocking 54 political prisoners in Iran are currently on death row), and women are now increasingly being executed.

Moreover, the severe violations of due process and other judicial abuses that took place throughout Azizi’s prosecution are routine in Iran; the denial of access to independent counsel (and, not infrequently, any counsel), the use of torture to extract false “confessions,” the court’s refusal to address allegations of torture or to consider evidence presented by the defense, and the reliance on these “confessions” to convict, are routine in Islamic Republic courts—including in capital cases where people’s lives are at stake.

In addition, Azizi’s Kurdish ethnic identity reflects the fact that the Islamic Republic continues to disproportionally apply the death penalty to members of Iran’s minority communities, especially the Kurdish and Baluchi communities.

“The international community must not remain silent as the Islamic Republic seeks to execute Pakhshan Azizi. Iranian authorities are weaponizing the judicial system as a tool of repression, and this gross violation of due process sends a stark warning to every human rights defender and humanitarian worker in the country that their fate could be the gallows,” Ghaemi said.