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WASHINGTON: Iran’s judiciary denied on Tuesday that eight women arrested over protests that shook the Islamic republic this year were at risk of execution, after US President Donald Trump urged Tehran to release them to help negotiations. Rights groups have said at least one woman arrested over the January protests has been sentenced to death while at least one more is facing charges that carry the death penalty and could see her executed. “Trump was misled once again by fake news,” the judiciary’s official Mizan Online website said. “The women who were claimed to be on the verge of execution, some of them have been released, while others face charges that, if convictions are upheld, would at most result in imprisonment.” Trump had earlier said on social media that the women’s release could work in Iran’s favour in negotiations, re-posting an activist’s claim that eight women were facing death by hanging. That claim did not give names but included photographs of the women. Also read: Trump urges Iran to free eight women he says are to be executed “I would greatly appreciate the release of these women,” Trump posted on Truth Social. US-based Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad however posted the names of all eight women on her X account. They had all been arrested in connection with the January protests, which activists say were put down in a crackdown that left thousands dead. “Say their names,” Alinejad said, alleging that one of those held was as young as 16. One of the women identified, Bita Hemmati, was sentenced to death along with three men, including her husband, in a case where they are accused of throwing concrete blocks from a residential building onto security forces in Tehran, several rights groups reported earlier this month. The US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center rights group said it also believed that Hemmati was the woman who appeared in a video broadcast on state television in January being personally interrogated by judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei. Another woman in the pictures reposted by Trump is Mahboubeh Shabani, 32, who according to the Norway-based Hengaw rights group, has been charged with the capital offence of “waging war against God” after being accused of using her motorcycle to transport wounded protesters in the northeastern city of Mashhad. She is currently being held in the women’s ward of Vakilabad prison in Mashhad, according to Hengaw, which expressed “deep concern over the risk of a death sentence in this case”. Norway-based Iran Human Rights and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty said last week – in their joint annual report on the death penalty in Iran – that at least 1,639 people have been executed in 2025, including 48 women. Rights groups accuse the Islamic republic of using capital punishment to instil fear throughout society and stepping up executions of political prisoners against the background of the war against the US and Israel.
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