For decades, the Islamic regime in Iran has executed women whose true crime was survival. They were child brides forced into marriages they could not escape, wives trapped in violent households, or mothers protecting their children from rape. When these women struck back, the state did not see victims—it saw criminals. Behind every hanging lies not just an act of desperation but a lattice of discriminatory laws that make women powerless in life and defenseless in court.
The execution of Zahra Fotouhi in September 2025, for killing her harassing ex-husband, is not an isolated tragedy. It is the inevitable result of a legal system designed to erase women’s agency and enforce what activists now rightly call gender apartheid.
Zahra Fotouhi’s Case
On September 19, 2025, 52-year-old Zahra Fotouhi was hanged in Tabriz Central Prison after five years in custody. She had killed her ex-husband, whom she accused of relentless harassment and intimidation. According to Iran Human Rights, her death marked the 27th execution of a woman in Iran in 2025 alone [1][2].
Under Iran’s qisas (“retribution in kind”) law, the victim’s family has the power to demand execution or grant forgiveness in exchange for diyeh (blood money). Fotouhi’s claims of harassment were meaningless to the court. In the logic of the system, the fact of the killing mattered more than the context of abuse.
The Penal Code: Equality in Death, Inequality in Life
Iranian authorities often defend the death penalty against women by saying it is applied “equally” to both sexes. But this is a cruel sleight of hand. Women live under a penal and family code that systematically denies them equality in every domain of life. The so-called equality in punishment only ensures they are equally executed, never equally protected.
Child Marriage and Marital Subjugation
Girls can be legally married at 9, and judges can authorize even younger marriages. Once married, a woman cannot leave the home, travel, or work without her husband’s permission. If she resists, the law sides with the husband. For many women, abuse begins here: they are trapped by contract, legally bound to submit.
Divorce and Custody
Men hold an almost absolute right to divorce. Women may petition only under narrow circumstances: cruelty, addiction, impotence, and abandonment. Even then, judges often side with husbands. Custody of children defaults to fathers or paternal relatives once children reach a certain age. A woman escaping abuse risks losing her children.
Inheritance and Economic Dependence
Under Iran’s civil code, women inherit half the share of men. Widows inherit only one-eighth of their husband’s estate if there are children. These rules guarantee economic dependence, leaving women unable to pay diyeh when their lives depend on it. Poverty is baked into the system.
Testimony in Court
A woman’s testimony counts as half that of a man in many criminal cases, including murder. If a woman defends herself from rape, her words carry half the weight of her attacker’s. In murder trials, this bias often erases claims of abuse or self-defense.
The Machinery of Qisas
In homicide, qisas dominates. The family of the deceased decides life or death. Abuse, child marriage, or attempted rape are not recognized as mitigating factors. Even when the killer is a minor—like Zeinab Sekaanvand, married at 15 and executed at 24—the system treats her as fully responsible, ignoring the violence that led her to kill [5][6].
The result is a perverse equation: women are punished equally but live unequally. This is not justice. It is a double condemnation.
Zeinab Sekaanvand — 2018
Married at 15, abused and raped by her husband and brother-in-law. Arrested at 17, she confessed under torture. Denied legal counsel, she was executed at 24. International observers condemned it as a blatant violation of protections for juveniles [5][6].
Reyhaneh Jabbari — 2014
Convicted of killing a man she said tried to rape her. Despite international campaigns, including pleas from the UN, she was executed in Tehran at 26. Her case epitomized the refusal of Iranian courts to recognize women’s right to self-defense [7][8].
Fatemeh Haghighat-Pajouh — 2008
She killed her husband after he attempted to rape her 15-year-old daughter. Despite years of appeals and global advocacy, she was hanged in Tehran’s Evin Prison in 2008. Her execution was a devastating signal that even maternal defense of a child is no shield under Iranian law [9][10][11]. To add insult to injury, the day Fatemeh was executed in Iran, Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, two wealthy American women and co-founders of Code Pink, arrived in Tehran on a “citizen diplomacy” trip.
Maryam (Massoumeh) Karimi — 2021
Executed in Rasht Central Prison for killing her abusive husband. Under qisas, her husband’s family demanded retribution. The law then compelled her daughter — the victim’s legal heir — to perform the execution by pulling the chair from under her mother’s feet [3][4].
Samira Sabzian — 2023
Married at 15, executed for killing her abusive husband. Rights groups begged for clemency, but the noose prevailed [12].
Nazanin Fatehi - (2006)
At 17, stabbed a man who tried to rape her niece. Initially sentenced to death, she was freed only after global outrage forced a retrial [13].
Gender Apartheid: The Architecture of Control
The oppression of women in Iran is not piecemeal; it is structural. Legal scholars and human rights groups increasingly describe it as gender apartheid: a system of laws and policies designed to segregate, subordinate, and control women in every sphere of life.
Social Segregation
Women are barred from stadiums, restricted in education, and segregated in public spaces. Dress codes enforced by the “morality police” criminalize women’s very appearance. A strand of hair is treated as a threat to the state.
Legal Subordination
Every element of the civil code entrenches male authority in marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance. Women are denied guardianship over their children and are treated as perpetual minors under law.
Penal Repression
In the courts, women face harsher consequences not because the laws are harsher on paper but because their lived reality is discounted. When a man kills, context may be considered. When a woman kills, context vanishes.
International Law and Apartheid
The UN defines apartheid as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one group over another.” By this measure, Iran’s system qualifies. It is not only sexism; it is systemic domination codified into law. That domination extends from family law to the gallows.
The cases of Fotouhi, Karimi, Jabbari, Haghighat-Pajouh, and countless unnamed women expose the heart of the Khomeinist regime’s injustice. The state boasts of equality in punishment while enforcing inequality in every part of life. This is not equality; it is state-sponsored gender apartheid.
Every execution is a message: women in Iran cannot expect protection, only punishment. Their suffering in abusive marriages, forced child unions, and violent homes is invisible to the courts. When they dare to fight back, the state takes its revenge.
International advocacy has occasionally forced retrials, as in the case of Nazanin Fatehi [13]. But systemic reform remains absent. Until laws on marriage, testimony, inheritance, and qisas are overturned, women will continue to face the hangman’s noose for the crime of surviving.
Fotouhi’s death is not the end of a story. It is one more chapter in a history of deliberate cruelty—a system that treats women as half human in life and fully expendable in death.
Sources
[1] IranWire – Iran Executes Woman Who Killed Abusive Ex-Husband (Sept. 20, 2025)
https://iranwire.com/en/news/144935-iran-executes-woman-who-killed-abusive-ex-husband/
[2] Iran Human Rights – 27th Woman Executed in 2025 (Sept. 2025)
https://iranhr.net/en/articles/5825/
[3] Iran Human Rights – Maryam Karimi Execution Report
https://iranhr.net/en/articles/4706/
[4] IranWire – Daughter Forced to Execute Mother in Rasht
https://iranwire.com/en/society/69010/
[5] Amnesty International – Iran: Halt Execution of Juvenile Offender Zeinab Sekaanvand (Oct. 2018)
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/10/iran-hours-left-to-halt-execution-of-female-juvenile-offender/
[6] BBC – Iran Executes Child Bride Zeinab Sekaanvand (Oct. 2018)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45789299
[7] Reuters – Iran Executes Woman Convicted of Murder Despite Self-Defense Claim (Oct. 25, 2014)
https://www.reuters.com/article/iran-execution-idINKCN0ID0AP20141025
[8] The Guardian – Iran Executes Reyhaneh Jabbari (Oct. 25, 2014)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/25/iran-executes-reyhaneh-jabbari-murder
[9] IranRights.org – Fatemeh Haqiqatpajouh
https://www.iranrights.org/memorial/story/-7767/fatemeh-haqiqatpajuh
[10] Amnesty International – Urgent Action: Risk of Execution for Fatemeh Haqiqatpajouh (2004)
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/040/2004/en/
[11] RFE/RL – Interview With Daughter of Executed Woman (Nov. 2008)
https://www.rferl.org/a/Interview_With_Daughter_Of_Executed_Iranian_Woman/1353805.html
[12] The Independent – Iran Executes Child Bride Samira Sabzian (Dec. 2023)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-child-bride-capital-punishment-b2467667.html
[13] Wikipedia – Nazanin Fatehi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazanin_Fatehi
[14] Iran Human Rights – Gender Perspective of the Death Penalty in Iran
https://iranhr.net/media/files/En_Gender_Perspective_of_the_Death_Penalty_in_Iran_EN.pdf