Right activist awarded death sentence

PARIS:

Iranian authorities Thursday sentenced to death a woman labour activist on charges of links to an outlawed Kurdish organisation, rights groups said.

Sharifeh Mohammadi, initially arrested in December in Rasht, Iran, was convicted of the capital crime of rebellion and sentenced to death, said the Norway-based Hengaw and US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

She is accused of being a member of the Kurdish separatist Komala party, which is banned in Iran. Hengaw said she endured “physical and mental torture” by intelligence agents while in custody.

A revolutionary court in Rasht, the main city of Gilan province on the Caspian Sea, convicted and sentenced her to death following a hearing, the groups said.

A source close to her family said Mohammadi was a member of a local labour organisation and had “nothing to do with Komala”.

The US-based Iran-focused rights group Abdorrahman Boroumand Center said the death sentence was linked to “her involvement with an independent labour union”.