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Iran is set to execute four people accused of participating in anti-government protests earlier this year.

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One of the demonstrators is Bita Hemmati, who is the first woman due to be hanged following the protests that broke out across the country in January.

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Hemmati has been accused of numerous charges, including using explosives and weapons, throwing objects such as concrete blocks and bottles, and “harming stationed forces on-site,” according to a news release from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

The regime’s judiciary also listed “participating in protest gatherings,” “sending content with the aim of undermining security” and “chanting protest slogans” in line with “disrupting national security” and in connection with “hostile groups” as her crimes.

Hemmati’s husband Mohammadreza Majid Asl was also sentenced to death, along with two other men, Behrouz Zamaninezhad and Kourosh Zamaninezhad, both of whom lived in the same apartment building as the couple.

A fifth defendant in the case, Amir Hemmati, identified as a “relative” of the couple, was sentenced to five years of discretionary imprisonment on the charge of “assembly and collusion against national security,” and another eight months behind bars for “propaganda against the regime.”

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Forced confessions?

A source close to the family said the five were arrested in the same raid in Tehran, accused by Iran’s government of “operational action for the hostile government of the United States and hostile groups,” according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).

The agency claimed the five were “subjected to pressure” during their interrogations, noting concerns of possible forced confessions.

An execution date has not been released.

“The Iranian Resistance once again calls on the United Nations, relevant international bodies, and human rights defenders to take immediate action to save the lives of prisoners sentenced to death, especially political prisoners and those detained during the uprising,” the NCRI said in a statement.

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What triggered protests?

The protests in Iran were sparked by a series of strikes by shopkeepers and market merchants in the Iranian capital in late December, which spread in the ensuing days across the city as residents, students and other groups joined forces in one of the largest protest movements Tehran has seen in recent years.

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Thousands were either killed or injured, and tens of thousands more were arrested or detained as part of the regime’s crackdown.

Iranian authorities executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, the highest number since 1989, according to a joint report from Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty.

That amounts to an average of more than four executions a day, France 24 reported.

The group warned that the regime risked killing even more people this year following the protests in January and the war against the United States and Israel.

The report noted that if the Islamic republic “survives the current crisis, there is a serious risk that executions will be used even more extensively as a tool of oppression and repression.”

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