A Kurdish Iranian woman on death row took part in a nationwide protest movement which started in 2022, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) news outlet said, muddling the official narrative on her conviction for alleged armed separatism.
IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported that Pakhshan Azizi allegedly entered Iran illegally in 2023 aiming to “create unrest in universities on the anniversary of the 2022 protests.”
The report added that Azizi met with the family of Hadis Najafi, a 23-year-old protestor who was fatally shot in the heart, abdomen and neck during a demonstration in Karaj on September 21, 2022.
The report said that Azizi's actions were intended to "advance the enemy's objective of stirring unrest in universities and inflaming the national mood."
The 2022 protests, which marked the largest challenge to the Islamic Republic in its nearly 50-year history, began in September when a young woman Mahsa Amini died after being arrested for allegedly failing to comply with Iran's mandatory hijab laws.
Iranian authorities responded to the protests with lethal force, with security forces killing at least 550 demonstrators, including dozens of children and arresting tens of thousands, according to rights groups.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blamed the United States and Israel for the protests, calling them riots engineered by Iran's enemies and their allies in his first public remarks on the unrest.
Azizi was sentenced to death in July of last year on charges of armed rebellion against the state and sentenced to four years in prison for alleged membership in the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), which she and her lawyers have denied.
Tasnim, which is well-sourced among security forces, and other outlets linked to the establishment repeated the accusations and had not highlighted her activism.
Her lawyer announced last week that the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, dismissing an appeal that highlighted multiple investigative flaws and the absence of credible evidence.
Rights groups have described the trial as a sham, denouncing the Supreme Court’s decision and calling for her release.
“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,” US-based rights group Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said in a statement.
Amnesty International condemned Iran's Supreme Court for upholding Azizi's conviction and death sentence, describing her trial and punishment as unjust.
A coalition of more than 100 Kurdish civil society and rights activists issued a statement on Monday, calling for the immediate annulment of Azizi's death sentence and a comprehensive review of her case.
Last week, sixty-eight political prisoners across multiple Iranian prisons also sounded the alarm over the imminent execution of three fellow inmates, including Azizi.
