Pakhshan Azizi

Pakhshan Azizi is a 40-year-old Kurdish civil activist and humanitarian worker who was arrested at her family home with three of her relatives on 4 August 2023 after she returned to Iran after ten years of doing humanitarian work abroad. She was held incommunicado in Ward 209 of Evin Prison for five months where she was subjected to torture to compel false confessions which she refused. While her father, sister and brother-in-law were later released, they received one-year prison sentences which were upheld on 26 September 2024

Charges: baghy (armed rebellion) through membership in armed opposition groups (PJAK). Article 287 of the IPC defines members of any group that stage armed rebellion against the Islamic Republic as baaghy (one who carries out baghy), and that its members shall be sentenced to death for baghy if they used weapons. In Pakhshan’s case, she is accused of staging armed rebellion against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic Republic also claimed to have fought ISIS. Furthermore, no evidence of either PJAK membership or use of weapon were presented against her in court.

Status: Sentenced to death by Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Afshari. Her lawyers were notified of the verdict on 23 July 2024. Pakhshan's death sentence was upheld by Branch 39 of the Supreme Court in early January 2025. The Article 474 appeal filed by her lawyers was rejected by the Supreme Court on 25 January 2025, due to the Court mistakenly assuming that Pakhshan was a member of ISIS, while she was aiding those displaced by ISIS. Pakhshan is currently held in Tehran’s Evin Prison. On 6 April, her second appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court "without even requesting the trial documents and dismissed the defence arguments as baseless" per her lawyer.