July 29, 2022 – Iran has executed three women in the space of a day this week, all on charges of murdering their husbands, according to an NGO.

There has been growing concern over the increasing number of women being hanged in Iran, as the country sees a surge in executions.

Many women killed husbands who were abusive, or they married as child brides or even relatives, activists say.

Norway-based Iran Human Rights said that on 27 July three women were executed in different prisons for murdering their husbands in separate cases, meaning at least 10 women have now been executed by Iran in 2022.

Senobar Jalali, an Afghan national, was executed in a prison outside the capital Tehran, it said.

Meanwhile, Soheila Abedi, who had married her husband when aged just 15, was hanged in a prison in the city of Sanandaj in western Iran.

She had committed the murder 10 years after their marriage and was convicted in 2015, IHR said.

Faranak Beheshti, who had been convicted around five years ago for the murder of her husband, was executed in the prison in the northwestern city of Urmia, it said.

Activists argue that Iran’s laws are stacked against women, who do not have the right to unilaterally demand a divorce, even in cases of domestic violence and abuse.

A report by IHR published in October last year said that at least 164 women were executed between 2010 and October 2021.

However, activists are alarmed by a surge in executions in Iran this year, coinciding with the rise of former judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi to the presidency in 2021 and protests over an economic crisis.

At least 306 people have been executed so far in Iran in 2022, according to a count by IHR.

The Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran and London-based Amnesty International said that Iran is carrying out executions at a “horrifying pace” in an “abhorrent assault” on the right to life.

WUNRN

Iran executes three women in single day – NGO (rte.ie)