ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran’s Supreme Court has rejected Pakhshan Azizi’s request for a retrial, placing the Kurdish humanitarian worker at imminent risk of execution, her lawyer said on Thursday. “Our request for a retrial in the case of Ms. #Pakhshan_Azizi was rejected. However, we will submit another request for a retrial to the Supreme Court and, by requesting the application of Article 477, we will ask the Chief Justice to prevent the execution of this ruling,” Amir Raesian, Azizi’s lawyer, said in a post on X. Pakhshan was sentenced to death for being a member of Iranian Kurdish groups considered terrorists by Tehran. “It is noteworthy that Ms. Azizi was sentenced to prison for membership in the PJAK [Free Life Party of Kurdistan] group and to death for membership in an unspecified rebel group,” Raesian said. Her lawyer has denied she ever took up arms, but said she was an aid worker in refugee camps in northeast Syria (Rojava) and Shingal (Sinjar) where she was helping those affected by Islamic State (ISIS) attacks. Amnesty International condemned the court’s decision. “The international community must immediately urge the Iranian authorities to halt the execution of arbitrarily detained humanitarian aid worker Pakhshan Azizi, who was sentenced to death following a grossly unfair trial before a Revolutionary Court last year,” Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said on Thursday. The United States and the European Union in January called on Iran to overturn her death sentence.
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