Donald Trump said yesterday (Wednesday) that at his request, Iranian authorities would not execute eight female protesters, and assured that four among them were to be released immediately and that the other four women would be sentenced to one month in prison.
“Very good news,” the US president wrote, expressing his satisfaction on his Truth Social network, adding: “I am very grateful to Iran and its leaders for respecting my request.”
Tehran denied on Tuesday that several women were threatened with the death penalty: “Trump has once again been misled by false information. Some of the women said to be about to be executed soon have already been released while others are facing criminal charges that carry a maximum prison sentence,” Mizan Agency, the news organ of the judiciary in Iran, had reported.
Agency Mizan, the news organ of the judiciary in Iran, had reported.
The Agence France-Presse was unable to confirm from an independent source these death threats, nor the identity of all the women whose photos the US president republished to support his request, which he made on Tuesday on the Truth Social platform.
There he had reposted a message originating from the platform X account of an activist named Eyal Yakobi, which contained the photos of eight women whose identities were not being released, with the following message: “The Islamic Republic of Iran is preparing to hang eight women.”
Masih Aliyinijad, an Iranian dissident who resides in the US, posted on Platform X the names of eight women, all arrested in connection with the January protests, which were violently suppressed.
“Say their names,” the activist wrote, stating that one of the women arrested was 16 years old.
Another is Bita Hemati, who was sentenced to the death penalty for throwing concrete blocks from a building at security forces during the protests, according to human rights groups.
In a report released in mid-April, the Norway-based NGO Hengaw published a photo of Bita Hemati that is identical to one of the eight photos republished by Donald Trump.
<p
According to the organisation, another of those photos depicts Mahboubeh Sabani, 32, sentenced to death for “waging war against God” after she transported injured protesters on her motorbike to Mashhad and is now imprisoned in that northeastern Iranian city.
Eyal Yakobi, who presents himself on Platform X as a future student at the top Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), publishes a lot of content supporting the joint Israeli-US operation in Iran and criticising pro-Palestinian protests.
</html
