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United Nations experts and a coalition of 400 prominent women have issued a plea to Iran, urging authorities to halt the execution of Zahra Tabari, a 67-year-old electrical engineer and women’s rights advocate.
Ms. Tabari was apprehended in April, with her family reporting accusations of collaboration with the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a proscribed opposition group.
In October, a Revolutionary Court in Rasht convicted her of “armed rebellion” following a brief video link trial lasting less than 10 minutes. Her family contends that the verdict was based on tenuous evidence: a piece of cloth bearing the phrase “Woman, Resistance, Freedom,” and an unpublished audio message.
Iranian officials have yet to release a statement regarding the case.
According to UN experts, at least 51 individuals in Iran are facing capital punishment after convictions for national security offenses, including armed rebellion, “enmity against God,” “corruption on Earth,” and espionage.
The UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteurs on human rights in Iran, violence against women, and arbitrary executions, alongside the working group on discrimination against women and girls, issued a joint statement highlighting Ms. Tabari’s case as indicative of “a pattern of serious violations of international human rights law.”
The experts noted that Ms. Tabari’s arrest occurred during a home raid conducted without a judicial warrant. She was then subjected to a month-long interrogation in solitary confinement, during which she was pressured to confess to bearing arms against the state and affiliation with an opposition group.
The UN experts added that Ms. Tabari was denied access to counsel of her choosing and was instead represented by a court-appointed lawyer. Her death sentence was reportedly issued immediately following the brief hearing.
“The severe procedural violations in this case—including the unlawful deprivation of her liberty, the denial of effective legal representation, the extraordinarily brief trial, the lack of adequate time to prepare a defence, and the use of evidence that appears insufficient to support a charge of [armed rebellion]—render any resulting conviction unsafe,” they stated.
They further emphasized that international law restricts the death penalty to the most serious crimes, specifically intentional killing.
“To execute Tabari under these circumstances would constitute arbitrary execution,” the experts asserted. “Criminalising women’s activism for gender equality and treating such expression as evidence of armed rebellion constitutes a grave form of gender discrimination.”
In addition to the UN intervention, over 400 prominent women, including Nobel laureates and former heads of state from Switzerland, Ecuador, Finland, Peru, Poland, and Ukraine, have signed a public appeal for Ms. Tabari’s immediate release, issued on Tuesday.
The appeal stated, “Iran is today the world’s number one executioner of women per capita. Zahra’s case lays bare this terror: in Iran, daring to hold a sign declaring women’s resistance to oppression is now punishable by death.”
The appeal was organized by Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran, a UK-based organization representing families of political prisoners executed in Iran three decades prior.
Another Iranian woman, Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish rights activist and social worker, is also facing the death penalty on similar charges as Ms. Tabari.
UN experts have previously stated that Ms. Azizi’s sentencing appears to be “solely related to her legitimate work as a social worker, including her support for refugees in Iraq and Syria.”
According to Iran Human Rights (IHR), at least 1,426 people, including 41 women, were executed in Iran within the first 11 months of 2025, marking a 70% increase compared to the same period the previous year.
The Norway-based group reports that almost half of those executed by the end of November were convicted of drug-related offenses, while 53 were convicted of national security offenses.
The changes to the judgement, which was also amended last week, are described as clerical mistakes, errors or omissions.
At least 347 people have now been put to death this year, according to the UK-based campaign group Reprieve.
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