Iran’s Revolutionary Court has sentenced a labor activist to death on a charge of “armed rebellion against the state,” based on an allegation of membership in an opposition group, Human Rights Watch said today.

Axar.az reports that On July 4, 2024, the court communicated the verdict against Sharifeh Mohammedi to her husband, Sirous Fathi, Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported.
HRANA reported on July 4, that intelligence agents arrested Mohammadi at her home in Rasht on December 5, 2023. A source close to Mohammadi’s family told HRANA that she had been a member of the Association of Labor Organizations until 2013. This group has no connection to Komala, a Kurdish social democratic party that had previously engaged in armed conflict in Iran and reportedly still maintains an armed wing, to which she was accused of belonging.
“Iranian authorities not only relentlessly target women activists, but they carry out additional attacks and repression on women from ethnic and religious minorities, said Nahid Naghshbandi, acting Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “If incoming President Pezeshkian wants to signal that he represents real change, he should start by halting this ongoing repression, including death sentences.”
Sixteen women political prisoners from Evin prison wrote in a letter on July 9, that they “stand alongside Sharifeh Mohammadi and all those threatened by the death penalty.” The letter stated that “Sharifeh Mohammadi, a labor activist, was sentenced to death after seven months of detention, torture, and interrogation based on baseless accusations.” The Nobel Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi was among the signatories.
Since the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on women activists and human rights defenders, employing harsher measures and issuing severe sentences to suppress dissent and silence opposition voices. This includes sentencing 11 women's rights and political activists to prison terms on March 27.
The targeting of ethnic and religious minorities is apparent in state crackdowns in regions like Kurdistan and Sistan and Baluchistan. Two other Kurdish women political activists, Pakhshan Azizi and Warisha Moradi, are on trial in Tehran on charges of “armed rebellion against the state.”