Kurdistan: The second request for retrial of a female political prisoner sentenced to death has been rejected by the Supreme Court of te Islamic republic of Iran
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- 6 days ago
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The second request for retrial of a female political prisoner sentenced to death has been rejected by the Supreme Court of te Islamic republic of Iran.
On April 6, 2025, Mazyar Tatayi, the attorney representing Pexshan(Pakhshan) Azizi, a female Kurdish political prisoner sentenced to death, currently held in Avin prison in Tehran, reported their second retrial request has been denied . Mr. Tatayi, a member of the Iranian Bar Association, in a post on the X platform, stating that "the branch 9 of the Supreme Court handling the case rejected the second request for retrial by Pexshan(Pakhshan) Azizi's lawyers without the requisition of the judicial file, deeming the defense presented by the lawyers as baseless. Such justification from the adjudicating branch necessitates the requisition of the judicial file, which unfortunately was not undertaken."
According to the reports received by the Kurdistan Human Rights Association in Geneva, the first request for retrial submitted by Pakhshan Azizi's lawyers was rejected by the Ninth Branch of the Supreme Court on January 25, 2025, and such ruling was communicated to her attorneys on January 26, 2025.
Pexshan(Pakhshan) Azizi, Kurdish political prisoner, a journalist and social worker graduate, was sentenced to death on August 24, 2024, by the 26th Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, presided by Chief Judge Iman Afshari, on charges of "rebellion" through "membership in one of the Kurdish opposition parties," following almost one year of imprisonment.
The trial of this Kurdish journalist took place in June 2024, and the verdict was communicated to her attorney on July 23, 2024.
On January 8, 2025, Amir Reisiian, another attorney for Pakhshan Azizi, announced that the death sentence for their client Mrs. Azizi was confirmed by the Branch 39 of the Supreme Court.
The ruling against Mrs. Azizi was issued while she had been deprived of access to legal counsel and family visits during her first eight months of detention and interrogation.
This social work graduate was apprehended in Tehran on August 4, 2023, by Iranian security forces and subsequently transferred to Ward 209 (the intelligence detention center) inside the infamous Avin Prison.
In December 2023, Pakhshan Azizi was transferred from Ward 209 to the women's ward of the same prison after four months of intensive interrogation.
On July 21, 2024, Pakhshan Azizi, in an open letter from Avin Prison titled "Concealing the Truth and its Alternative," highlighted the suffering associated with being a "woman" and a "Kurd" under the Islamic Republic's system, detailing her experiences of torture in solitary confinement and the inhumane conditions she has endured.
In a separate case, Pexshan Azizi was sentenced to four years of mandatory imprisonment on charges of "membership in Kurdish opposing groups”.
Simultaneously, three of her family members were sentenced to one year of mandatory imprisonment each for "aiding a criminal in evasion from trial and sentencing." On September 26, 2024, the Tehran Court of Appeals upheld, in its entirely, the one year sentences for Aziz Azizi, the father, Parshang Azizi, a sister and Hossein Abassi, a brother in-law of Pexshan Azizi respectively.
Furthermore, Mrs. Azizi had previously been arrested on November 16, 2009, during a protest by Kurdish students at the University of Tehran against political executions in Kurdistan. After four months of temporary detention, she was released on bail. This Kurdish women's activist later left Iran and has resided in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in recent years.
