Iranian authorities on Thursday sentenced a female labor activist to death for having links to a banned Kurdish organization, human rights groups reported.
Sharifeh Mohammadi was arrested in Rasht, Iran, in December and convicted of the crime of rebellion and sentenced to death, Norway-based Hengav and the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported.
She is accused of being a member of the Kurdish separatist Komala party, which is banned in Iran. Hengav said she suffered “physical and mental torture” by intelligence agents while in custody.
The groups said he was convicted and sentenced to death following a trial by a revolutionary court in Rasht, the main city of Gilan province on the Caspian Sea.
A source close to his family said Mohammadi was a member of a local labor organization and “had nothing to do with Komala.”
The US-based Iran-focused rights group Abdurrahman Boroumand Center said the death sentence was linked to “his involvement with an independent labor union”.
“This extreme decision highlights Iran’s harsh crackdown on dissent, particularly against labor activists amid economic turmoil,” it said.
A campaign supporting his case wrote on its social media accounts that the verdict was “absurd and baseless” and aimed at creating “fear and intimidation” among activists in Gilan province.
Gilan was a major center of protests that erupted in 2022, when a Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly violating dress rules for women and died in custody.
Human rights activists have accused Iranian authorities of using the death penalty as a tool to intimidate the entire population in response to the protests.
At least 249 people, including 10 women, were executed in Iran in the first six months of 2024, non-governmental group Iran Human Rights said.
It warned of the risk of a “sharp increase” in executions after Iran’s presidential election on Friday, in which ultra-conservative Saeed Jalili will face reformist Masoud Pezeshkian.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)