Twin sisters Taraneh and Romina Rahimi turned 20 in prison. Arrested at their home about a week after the January 2026 protests in Isfahan, the sisters were reportedly subjected to enforced disappearance, with their family unaware of their whereabouts for more than a month. During detention they were allegedly beaten repeatedly and dragged by their hair between cells and interrogation rooms — to the extent that the family member who was eventually allowed to visit them, five months later, did not initially recognise them. In the past twenty-four hours, I have learned that Taraneh’s skull was fractured in detention and that the wound, left untreated, has become infected. The abuse also took explicitly gendered forms. Taraneh was reportedly threatened that Romina would be subjected to sexual violence unless she confessed, and the sisters have described sexual assault and other ill-treatment in custody, filing a complaint concerning the sexual abuse. On 30 August 2026, Taraneh was sentenced to death for moharebeh (enmity against God) and Romina to 25 years in prison for aiding and abetting moharebeh, in a case involving 16 people, 10 of them sentenced to death, with no clarification of the acts attributed to each individual. The majority of those facing the death penalty for national security offences are men. But since the January protests, there has been an increase in the number of women sentenced to death on security-related charges. Today, at least 12 women are facing the death penalty for broadly applied national security offences. Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish social worker from Sanandaj, was arrested in 2023 and sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in 2024 for baghi (armed rebellion against the foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran). She has remained imprisoned since her arrest, and her appeals and requests for retrial have all been rejected. The conduct cited in her case relates to her humanitarian work in Kurdistan and Syria during the war against ISIS, including her work with refugees and internally displaced people. Even her judgment contains no evidence of participation in armed operations. She is facing execution for a humanitarian response to a population living through war. Zahra Shahbaz Tabari, a 67-year-old electrical engineer was sentenced to death for baghi by the Revolutionary Court in October 2025. The evidence against her consisted of a piece of cloth bearing the slogan Woman, Resistance, Freedom — which authorities claimed she planned to display in public — and an unpublished audio message. She suffers from chronic health conditions that have severely deteriorated in Lakan Prison, where she is held without adequate medical care. Other women, including Varisheh Moradi, Arghavan Fallahi and Bita Hemmati, were sentenced to death on security-related charges before their convictions were overturned on appeal. They now face retrial — and the risk of being sentenced to death once again. Gender can intersect with ethnicity, political activity, humanitarian work and other aspects of identity to produce distinct forms of discrimination, intimidation and abuse. Whether supporting people in war-torn regions or demanding basic rights, women are being sentenced to death — and the death penalty cannot be separated from the conditions under which these women are investigated, detained, interrogated and tried. This post has focused on women facing execution for national security offences; in the coming days, I will look at other gendered dimensions of capital punishment, including women sentenced to death under qisas and those facing execution for drug-related offences. My Mandate’s communication on Pakhshan Azizi spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… Response by the Iranian authorities spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… My Mandate’s communication on Taraneh and Romina Rahimi Communication not yet published but it will become available here: spcommreports.ohchr.org/tmse… My Mandate’s communication on Zahra Shahbaz Tabari spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… Response by the Iranian authorities spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… My Mandate’s communication on Varisheh Moradi spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… Response by the Iranian authorities spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… My Mandate’s communication on Arghavan Fallahi spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… Response from government not yet received. My Mandate’s communication on Bita Hemmati spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe… Response by the Iranian authorities spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMRe…