October 12, 2024, 10:19 AM
October 12, 2024, 10:19 AM
The Supreme Court of Iran has annulled the death sentence issued against the well-known Iranian labor rights activist, Sharifeh Mohammadi, as reported by her lawyer this Saturday (10/12/2024). Mohammadi’s sentence will be re-examined in a new trial, he has announced. Before her arrest, Mohammadi had been a strong advocate for workers’ rights. “The Supreme Court of the country annulled the verdict of my client, Mrs. Sharifeh Mohammadi, and sent the case to another Court for new review,” said her lawyer Amir Rareisian in statements to the Shargh newspaper.
Mohammadi was arrested in the northern Iranian city of Rasht in December last year and has been held in several prisons since. In July, the Rasht Revolutionary Court sentenced her to death for “armed rebellion against the state” of the Islamic Republic, after being accused of being a member of the Kurdish separatist party Komala. This is considered illegal in the Islamic Republic, where union participation outside of organizations authorized and controlled by the State is prohibited.
According to Amnesty International, these accusations were refuted by a source close to the family, who stated that Mohammadi had “nothing to do with Komala” and that he was a member of a local union until 2011. Amnesty indicated that the trial against Mohammadi, which consisted only in a 30-minute session, “was manifestly unfair”, as she was connected “from prison via video conference and was denied the right to speak”.
Mohammadi, as a union and human rights activist, supported women and criticized the arrests during the protests that broke out in Iran after the death in custody of the young Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini, in September 2022, after being arrested for not wearing properly wearing the Islamic veil. The industrial design engineer and union activist had been arrested in December 2023 and transferred to a detention center in Rasht, where she was subjected to “torture and ill-treatment”, always according to the international NGO. In mid-August, Iran also acquitted rapper Tomaj Salehi of the death penalty.
