UN rapporteur urges Iran to halt imminent execution of Kurdish woman

The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, has sounded the alarm after Iran’s Supreme Court denied a judicial review for Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish political prisoner and humanitarian worker facing a death sentence.

“Her imminent execution would violate international human rights law,” Sato wrote on Friday on X, urging Iranian authorities to “immediately halt her execution.”

Azizi was arrested in August 2023 and sentenced to death for armed rebellion against the state after an Islamic Revolutionary Court trial in Tehran last July.

Rights groups say the charges are politically motivated and linked to her humanitarian work helping women and children displaced by Islamic State attacks in northeast Syria.

Azizi's lawyer, Amir Raisian, wrote on X that they will file another retrial request and appeal to Iran's judiciary chief in a last-ditch effort to stop the execution.

Amnesty International also slammed the decision, saying, “The Iranian authorities must halt the execution of arbitrarily detained humanitarian aid worker Pakhshan Azizi, who was sentenced to death following a grossly unfair trial,”

The organization's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa Diana Eltahawy also pointed to reports that Azizi was tortured by authorities and faced gender-based violence in detention.

Other rights groups have warned that Azizi’s case reflects a broader pattern of the Iranian state arbitrarily wielding the death penalty to suppress dissent—especially in the wake of the nationwide 2022 protests demanding the government's downfall.