Pakhshan Azizi was arrested in 2023 and accused of subversive activities. In 2024, Iran carried out 901 executions, a record for the past nine years.
Iran's Supreme Court has confirmed the death sentence for Kurdish activist Pakhshan Azizi. The woman, 40 years old, had been arrested in 2023 on charges of subversive activities against the Islamic Republic and is being held in Evin prison, the same facility where Italian journalist Cecilia Sala was detained for twenty days.
In recent months Iran has intensified its death sentences. In 2024 there were 901 executions, a record for the past decade.
Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish activist, was first arrested in 2009 following some university protests. More recently she was arrested in Tehran in August 2023 along with several family members. She was carrying out humanitarian work in refugee camps in the north of the country, but Iranian authorities accused her of being part of illegal armed groups engaged in subversive activities against the Republic. An accusation that Iranian courts frequently use against Kurdish opposition groups.
For this reason Azizi was held in solitary confinement and then in the women's wing of Evin prison, in the capital Tehran. The facility where political prisoners are held, and the same place where Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, arrested on 19 December, spent twenty days in inhumane and degrading conditions before being released on 9 January as part of what has been called "Iranian hostage diplomacy", which in turn led Italy to release Iranian researcher Mohammaed Abedini on 12 January.
Last July, Iranian justice sentenced activist Azizi to death for "rebellion against the Islamic Republic", a sentence that civil rights organisations say is aimed at crippling the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, which arose following the killing of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini by Iranian security forces in September 2022. Azizi's lawyers appealed against the sentence, which has now been confirmed by the Supreme Court. Her lawyers have announced a further appeal, though it could be pre-empted at any moment by the execution of the Kurdish activist. Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is also detained at Evin but provisionally at home for health reasons, has issued an appeal for the international community to speak out against Iran's execution policy.
The death sentence of Pakhshan Azizi is not an isolated event. In recent months Iran, which under president Masoud Pezeshkian — who took office in July 2024 — had promised to adopt a more reformist approach, has in reality significantly increased the number of capital sentences.
According to the UN, in 2024 a total of 901 death sentences were carried out, of which 40 in December alone. This represents an increase of 6 per cent compared to executions in 2023 and the highest figure in the past nine years. The non-governmental organisation Iran Human Rights added that at least 31 women were sentenced to death during the year, the highest number in the past 17 years. The human rights organisation Hengaw highlighted that more than half of the executions in 2024 involved people belonging to ethnic minorities, of whom 183 were Kurdish, just like Pakhshan Azizi.
As the United Nations underlines, the vast majority of sentences were handed down for drug-related offences, but several people connected to the anti-regime protests that broke out in 2022 following the killing of Mahsa Amini were also executed. Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has called on Iran to place a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.
