The Supreme Court of Iran has rejected, for the second time, the retrial request for Pakhshan Azizi, an Iranian Kurdish political prisoner sentenced to death.
According to the Campaign for the Defense of Political and Civil Prisoners, Maziyar Tataei, Azizi’s lawyer, warned about the imminent risk of execution following the Supreme Court’s decision.
In a post on his personal X (Twitter) account, Tataei stated that the court rejected the second retrial request submitted by Azizi’s legal team without even reviewing the original case file, dismissing the lawyers’ defense as baseless.
Previously, Amir Raeesian, another lawyer on the case, had shared an image of the Supreme Court’s decision rejecting the first retrial request. That document revealed that the judge presiding over Branch 39 of the Supreme Court had wrongly assumed Azizi was a member of ISIS, when in fact her activities were humanitarian and aimed against ISIS. Based on this incorrect assumption, the judge had upheld her death sentence.
Pakhshan Azizi was sentenced to death and four years in prison by Branch 39 of the Supreme Court, under the charge of baghi (armed rebellion) through alleged membership in opposition groups, under the authority of Judge Iman Afshari.
Azizi, a native of Mahabad, was arrested on August 4, 2023, in Tehran along with her father Aziz Azizi, her sister Porshang Azizi, and her brother-in-law Hossein Abbasi. After being held in solitary confinement for around four months in Ward 209 of Evin Prison, a Ministry of Intelligence facility, she was transferred to the women’s ward in the same prison.
Security officials accused her of being part of armed groups opposing the Islamic Republic. However, according to her lawyer, Azizi’s activities in northern Syria were purely humanitarian and centered on aid work in refugee camps — including Shingal and others displaced by ISIS attacks — and were not political in nature.