Inside Iran’s chambers of death, another woman awaits her fate.
Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish political prisoner and former aid worker, faces the confirmation of her death sentence by Iran’s Supreme Court. Her crime? The Islamic Republic accuses her of “baghi” – rebellion.
For 46 years, the gallows of the Islamic Republic have claimed countless women’s lives. Political activists disappear into prisons, never to be seen again.
Baha’i women face the executioner’s noose solely for their faith.
The machinery of death operates with chilling efficiency, with death sentences handed down like traffic tickets and carried out before the ink even dries on the orders.
Beyond the shadow of the gallows, Iran’s prisons hold even more women serving life sentences, buried alive in cells for the crime of defiance.
And Azizi’s case? It’s just the newest chapter in this dark chronicle.
The Supreme Court’s ruling is not just about one woman’s fate – it’s a warning to every woman who dreams of freedom, every religious minority who dares to pray differently, every voice that refuses to be silenced.
Azizi, a resident of Mahabad, was arrested by security forces in Tehran on August 4, 2023, and transferred to Ward 209 of Evin Prison. She had been previously detained by security forces on November 16, 2009, and released on bail after four months.
These are not like qisas cases, where the government claims to merely facilitate private justice.
No – these are direct acts of state power, methodically deployed to crush dissent. In the Islamic Republic’s playbook, women’s lives are mere chess pieces in a game of social control.
Farrokhroo Parsa: The Executed Education Minister
Farrokhroo Parsa, one of Iran’s most prominent cultural figures, was executed by firing squad in April 1980.
She faced charges of “promoting immorality, running centers of corruption, adultery, embezzlement of public funds, and collaboration with SAVAK,” alongside other accusations largely unrelated to her cultural and professional background.
Parsa, a high school teacher and physician, served as Iran’s Minister of Education for a decade before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, dedicating herself to educating Iranian students.
Accounts suggest she was arrested in January 1980, a year after the monarchy’s fall. However, no detailed information about her arrest has been disclosed.
Her trial was widely covered by prominent newspapers of the time, such as Keyhan. In just five brief court sessions, Parsa was sentenced to death.
During her defense, she said, “Throughout my years of service as Minister of Education, I always tried to recruit the best teachers, improve educational programs, and ensure students were equipped with vocational and technical skills alongside their academic studies.”
Despite her defense, Parsa was executed by firing squad on May 8, 1980, in Evin Prison, just days after her sentencing and without the opportunity to appeal.
Parsa is remembered as one of Iran’s most influential women, particularly for her efforts to promote gender equality in education.
Baha’i Women Among the First Victims
One of the earliest groups targeted by Iran’s execution policies was Baha’i women. On June 18, 1983, the first mass execution of women in Iran’s history took place at Shiraz’s Chogan Square.
Many of these women witnessed the execution of their children, fathers, or husbands just days before their own deaths.
Among the executed were Mona Mahmudnejad, a 17-year-old high school student; Ahereh Arjomandi Siyavashi, 30, a nurse; Akhtar Sabet, 25, a nurse; Roya Eshraghi, 23, a veterinary student expelled from university;
Shahin Dalvand, 26, a sociology graduate; Mahshid Niroumand, 28, a physics graduate; Simin Saberi, 25, an office worker; Ezzat Janami, 57; Nosrat Ghaffarani, 46; and Zarrin Moghimi, 29, an English literature graduate.
All ten women were executed solely for being Baha’is.
Mona Mahmudnejad showed remarkable strength as a teenager. Despite witnessing her father’s execution and the deaths of nine other women, she remained steadfast in her faith to the very end.
The Execution of Hundreds of Women in 1988
In the summer of 1988, many Iranian women and girls were executed, including some close to being released. While in custody, many were also forced into marriage.
Former Evin Prison warden Hossein Mortazavi Zanjani said that virgin female prisoners were forcibly married to prison guards before their execution, based on the belief that virgins should not be executed, as they would otherwise go to heaven.
Monireh Baradaran, a member of the families seeking justice for the 1988 mass executions, wrote during the trial of Hamid Nouri – a former deputy prosecutor at Gohardasht Prison – in Sweden, “Women were not exempt from the 1988 catastrophe.”
She added, “Hundreds of Mojahedin women in Tehran and other cities were executed. Sadly, due to the absence of female witnesses and plaintiffs, the executions of women were overshadowed and largely ignored in this trial.”
According to Baradaran’s writings, ten months before the 1988 executions, female prisoners in Tehran’s Gohardasht prison were transferred to Evin. Almost all of them were executed in the summer of 1988. Meanwhile, prisoners in Karaj’s prosecutor’s office, both male and female, remained in Gohardasht and faced trials by the “Death Committee.”
Similarly, prisoners from Kermanshah, who had been transferred to Gohardasht months earlier due to bombings during the Iran-Iraq war, also faced execution. Among them were likely women.
One of these women was Maliheh Aghvami, whose case was documented by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran. The London-based organization Justice for Iran has also conducted extensive research into the victims of the 1988 massacre.
Nevertheless, during Nouri’s trial, many present, including families of Khavaran mass grave victims, emphasized the lack of a comprehensive and reliable list of women executed in the 1980s.
No conclusive results have been achieved so far. The names and tragic fates of hundreds of women executed during that decade remain shrouded in mystery.
Shirin Alam Hooli: One of the Five
Shirin Alam Hooli was one of five Kurdish political prisoners executed at dawn on May 9, 2010, in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Alongside her were Farzad Kamangar, Ali Heydarian, Mehdi Eslami, and Farhad Vakili.
Born in June 1981 in a village near Maku in West Azerbaijan Province, Shirin was arrested following a bomb explosion in the parking lot of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base in western Tehran in June 1999.
Before her execution, Shirin wrote a letter describing the brutal torture she endured: “The moment I arrived [at the IRGC facility] before any questions were asked, they began beating me.”
“Throughout my detention, I suffered various forms of physical and psychological torture. My interrogators were men, and I was tied to a bed with handcuffs. They beat me with electric batons, cables, fists, and kicks to my head, face, body, and the soles of my feet.
“I barely understood or spoke Farsi at the time. When I couldn’t answer their questions, they beat me until I passed out. When the call to prayer sounded, they would go to pray, giving me time, as they put it, to think about my answers. But when they returned, the cycle of beatings, fainting, and icy water would start all over again.”
Zahra Bahrami: A Dual Citizen Executed
Amid the nationwide protests following Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election, Zahra Bahrami, a 45-year-old dual Iranian-Dutch citizen, was arrested and later executed in January 2011.
She was accused of being a member of the “Kingdom Assembly of Iran,” an opposition group.
Zahra’s life was fraught with hardship. According to reports from the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, she had been imprisoned in the Netherlands for alleged drug trafficking to fund a return to Iran to visit her ailing daughter.
After serving her sentence, she moved to the UK and became active in opposition groups while maintaining ties with Iran.
Her final trip to Iran was in December 2009 to care for her daughter undergoing chemotherapy, as documented by Amnesty International.
Two days after the deadly Ashura protests of 2009, Zahra was violently arrested.
Despite the Islamic Republic’s initial claim that her detention was politically motivated, she was later accused of drug-related offenses and sentenced to death.
Her family and lawyer consistently stated that the drug charges were fabricated after her arrest for political reasons.
On Death Row: Varisheh Moradi and Pakhshan Azizi
While some women have escaped execution in the Islamic Republic’s history, the issuance of death sentences based on vague and arbitrary charges continues.
The Islamic Republic has shown little hesitation in sentencing women to death under dubious legal grounds.
The most recent cases involve Varisheh Moradi and Pakhshan Azizi, two young women sentenced to death for their involvement in Kobani, Syria, during the Islamic State’s reign of terror against women in Iraq and Syria.
The Supreme Court has upheld Azizi’s death sentence, and it is reportedly set to be carried out, her brother says. Moradi’s sentence is still under appeal.
Azizi, a social worker, was first arrested for protesting the execution of Ehsan Fattahian, a Kurdish political prisoner. She later traveled to Kobani to aid Kurdish women and girls who had survived ISIS violence.
Moradi, a women’s and environmental rights activist, also worked in Kobani. From Evin Prison, she wrote about the suffering of women under both ISIS and the Islamic Republic in Iran: “ISIS beheads; the Islamic Republic hangs.”
Though executions of women in Iran are less frequent than those of men, human rights activists say that women are often subjected to even more unfair trials.
From Farrokhroo Parsa to Pakhshan Azizi, these women have sought lives free from political, cultural, economic, and state violence.
Yet, the Islamic Republic has deemed their existence incompatible with its survival.
Source » iranwire