Iranian authorities on Tuesday sentenced four more people to death over last January’s protests, including Bita Hemmati, in a ruling that deepens an already sweeping crackdown and puts a woman on death row in the case for the first known time. The other defendants were Mohammadreza Majidi-Asl, Behrouz Zamaninejad and Kourosh Zamaninejad.
The sentences were handed down by a Tehran Revolutionary Court presided over by Judge Imam Afshari. The four were convicted of carrying out actions on behalf of the United States and were accused of using explosives and weapons, harming stationed forces on-site, and throwing bottles, concrete blocks and incendiary materials from the roofs of buildings. Hemmati is believed to be the first woman sentenced to death over the protests.
The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center said Hemmati may be the woman shown in a video broadcast on state television in January, when judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was seen personally interrogating a defendant. The group said the recording and broadcasting of forced confessions from defendants in an opaque process “constitutes a blatant violation of the defendant's rights.”
The new sentences come after Iran already hanged seven people in connection with the protests, and after death sentences were issued against at least 26 other people arrested over the unrest. Several hundred more detainees are still facing charges that could see them executed, according to rights groups. Last month, Iran executed three men accused of killing police officers during the protests, including Saleh Mohammadi, a young member of the country’s national wrestling team.
The case has become one of the sharpest symbols of Iran’s use of capital punishment during political unrest. The Center for Human Rights in Iran said dozens of people arrested during the January 2026 protests have been sentenced to death following grossly unfair, fast-tracked trials conducted without due process, access to independent counsel and reliance on torture-tainted forced confessions as evidence. Iran Human Rights Monitor said Iran carried out 656 executions in the first three months of this year, while Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty said at least 1,639 people were executed in 2025, including 48 women.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran called on the United Nations to take immediate action to save the lives of prisoners sentenced to death, especially political prisoners and those detained during the uprising. For Hemmati and the others, the question now is whether their sentences become the next executions in a crackdown activists say is meant to terrify a country that has already seen thousands killed and tens of thousands arrested.
