Razieh Abbasi, Hassan Farahani and Unidentified Man Hanged for Murder

According to Hamshahri newspaper, a woman and two men were hanged in Ghezelhesar Prison on 17 December 2025. The unnamed defendants were all sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for separate murders.

IHRNGO has established the identities of the woman and one of the men as Razieh Abbasi and Hassan Farahani. The third man has not been identified at the time of writing. According to the Hamshahri report, Razieh was accused of killing her husband with the help of another man in the Autumn of 2021. The unidentified man was accused of killing a Namjoo police station officer in September 2022, and Hassan Farahani was accused of killing another individual in February 2021 over debts he was unable to pay back.

Razieh Abbasi is the 44th woman execution recorded in 2025 and the 31st to be hanged for murder charges. This is the highest number of women executions recorded in Iran in more than two decades. Iran executes the highest number of recorded women executions globally.

In January 2025, IHRNGO published a report titled “Women and the Death Penalty in Iran; a Gendered Perspective,” which sheds light on the contemporary experiences of women facing the death penalty, focusing on the discriminatory laws and societal factors that perpetuate their suffering. 

Those charged with the umbrella term of “intentional murder” are sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) regardless of intent or circumstances due to a lack of grading in law. Once a defendant has been convicted, the victim’s family are required to choose between death as retribution, diya (blood money) or forgiveness.

Crucially, while an indicative amount is set by the Judiciary every year, there is no legal limit to how much can be demanded by families of the victims. IHRNGO has recorded many cases where defendants are executed because they cannot afford to pay the blood money. Should the victim’s family choose execution, they are not only encouraged to attend, but also to physically carry out the execution themselves.

According to IHRNGO’s 2024 Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 419 people including a juvenile offender and 19 women, were executed for murder charges, the highest number of qisas executions since 2010. Only 12% of the recorded qisas executions were announced by official sources. In 2024, Iran Human Rights also recorded 649 cases of families choosing diya or forgiveness instead of qisas executions. At least 641 people were executed for murder charges in the first eleven months of 2025.