Second Request for Retrial Denied
Amid growing concerns about the imminent execution of Kurdish political prisoner Pakhshan Azizi, Iran’s Supreme Court has rejected her second request for a retrial. According to her legal team, the Court refused to even request or review her case file and instead dismissed the request on purely procedural grounds, without considering the evidence or legal arguments submitted by her defense.
On April 6, 2025, her attorney, Maziar Tataei, wrote on the social media platform X that “the Supreme Court’s reviewing branch rejected the retrial request without requesting the case file and solely based on formal reasoning.” He described the decision as a “clear indication of the lack of transparency and a serious violation of fair trial principles” within Iran’s judiciary.
Earlier, in February 2025, another of Azizi’s lawyers, Amir Raesian, had also confirmed the rejection of the first retrial request and warned that the dismissal significantly increased the risk of her death sentence being carried out at any moment.
Azizi, a civil society activist from Mahabad and a graduate in Social Work from Allameh Tabataba’i University, was sentenced to death and an additional four years in prison in August 2024 by Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, presided over by Judge Iman Afshari. She was convicted on charges of “baghi” (armed rebellion against the state), a charge often used against political dissidents. However, human rights experts say the evidence against her is unreliable and based primarily on confessions extracted under torture.
She was arrested on August 4, 2023, in the Kharazi district of Tehran and transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence’s detention center. She spent weeks under harsh interrogation in Ward 209 of Evin Prison before being moved to the women’s ward. Throughout her detention, she was subjected to intense physical and psychological torture aimed at forcing her to confess to alleged affiliations with opposition groups—confessions that now serve as the main basis for her death sentence.
According to her legal team, the Supreme Court not only rejected both retrial requests but failed to even request the original court documents. Its decision, made without examining the case materials, represents a blatant denial of due process and the right to a fair and transparent judicial review.
The original trial was also marred by serious due process violations. Held behind closed doors without the presence of independent observers, Azizi’s two court sessions took place on May 28 and June 16, 2024. Human rights organizations have since strongly criticized the conduct of the proceedings and raised alarms about the deeply flawed nature of her prosecution.
Background on Pakhshan Azizi
Azizi has a history of political activism and prior arrests. She was first detained in October 2019 during a student protest in Tehran against political executions in Kurdistan. She was released on bail in March 2020 after spending months in detention under a heavy bail amount of 100 million tomans.
Her most recent arrest in June 2023 and the subsequent reports of torture and coerced confessions follow a pattern widely documented in the Islamic Republic’s treatment of political and civil activists, particularly in the Kurdish regions of Iran.
With the Supreme Court’s refusal to even consider new evidence and mounting international concern, the threat of Pakhshan Azizi’s execution appears more imminent than ever. Human rights defenders and international legal experts are calling once again for an immediate halt to the execution, and for a fair, public retrial that adheres to international legal standards.
In a judicial environment where even the basic review of a case is denied, Azizi’s life now hangs in the balance.
