News Center- Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) released a report on the number of women executed in Iran since it started documenting the executions in 2008.

At least 241 women were executed from 2010 to 2024, mostly on drug and murder convictions, the organization said on Monday, adding that 70 percent of those executed for murder had been convicted of killing their husbands or partners, often in the context of domestic violence. “114 women were executed for murder, while 107 women were executed on drug-related charges.”

‘They still hung her lifeless body’

In the report, IHR cited the case of Zahra Esmaili, a woman, who was forced to marry her neighbor, a ministry of intelligence official, after falling pregnant as a result of him raping her. Zahra Esmaili was convicted of murdering him in 2017 and sentenced to death.

“Her husband’s family insisted on qisas with her mother-in-law personally carrying out the execution in Rajai Shahr Prison on 19 February 2021. Her lawyer later revealed that Zahra had suffered from a heart attack after witnessing the group of men executed before her. Yet they still hung her lifeless body.”

One of the most high-profile cases in recent years was the execution of 26-year-old Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was convicted of murdering a former intelligence officer she maintained had tried to sexually assault her, in October 2014.

The documentary “Seven Winters in Tehran”, which was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2023 and won praise from critics, tells her story.

At least 31 women executed in 2024

At least 31 women were executed in 2024, according to IHR. “Two years after the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, the Islamic Republic recorded its highest annual number of women executed in 17 years, with 31 women executed in Iranian prisons.”