warned in a joint statement<\/a> that Ms Tabari’s case showed “a pattern of serious violations of international human rights law”.<\/p>\nShe was arrested during a raid on her home without a judicial warrant, and was interrogated for a month while held in solitary confinement and pressured to confess to taking up arms against the state and to membership in an opposition group, according to the experts.<\/p>\n
Ms Tabari was denied access to a lawyer of her choosing and was represented by a court-appointed lawyer, they said, adding that her death sentence was issued immediately after a brief hearing.<\/p>\n
“The severe procedural violations in this case – including the unlawful deprivation of her liberty, the denial of effective legal representation, the extraordinarily brief trial, the lack of adequate time to prepare a defence, and the use of evidence that appears insufficient to support a charge of [armed rebellion] – render any resulting conviction unsafe,” they said.<\/p>\n
They also noted that international law restricted the death penalty to the most serious crimes, meaning intentional killing.<\/p>\n
“To execute Tabari under these circumstances would constitute arbitrary execution,” the experts added. “Criminalising women’s activism for gender equality and treating such expression as evidence of armed rebellion constitutes a grave form of gender discrimination.”<\/p>\n
More than 400 prominent women – including several Nobel laureates, the former presidents of Switzerland and Ecuador, and former prime ministers of Finland, Peru, Poland and Ukraine – also signed a public appeal for Ms Tabari’s immediate release on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“Iran is today the world’s number one executioner of women per capita. Zahra’s case lays bare this terror: in Iran, daring to hold a sign declaring women’s resistance to oppression is now punishable by death,” it said.<\/p>\n
The appeal was organised by Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran, a UK-based group that represents the families of the thousands of political prisoners who were executed in Iran three decades ago.<\/p>\n
Another Iranian woman, Kurdish rights activist and social worker Pakhshan Azizi, is also facing the death penalty on the same charge as Ms Tabari.<\/p>\n
UN experts have previously said Ms Azizi’s sentencing appeared to be “solely related to her legitimate work as a social worker, including her support for refugees in Iraq and Syria”.<\/p>\n
According to Iran Human Rights (IHR), at least 1,426 people – including 41 women – were executed in Iran in the first 11 months of 2025 – a 70% increase on the same period last year.<\/p>\n
Almost half of those put to death as of the end of November were convicted of drug-related offences, while 53 were convicted of national security offences, the Norway-based group said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UN experts and 400 prominent women have urged Iran not to execute Zahra Tabari, a 67-year-old electrical engineer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-200934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}