In Iran, student Najmeh Amini sentenced to death for blasphemy — RMF24

In Iran, 23-year-old student Najmeh Amini has been sentenced to death for blasphemy related to social media posts. As RMF24 reports, citing human rights organizations, a court found her guilty in September of insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Amini was detained in January in Mashhad, one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Shiites in northeastern Iran. The authorities did not disclose the content of the posts deemed blasphemous.

Charges over posts

The local newspaper Khorasan, citing Amini herself, reported that she created the posts after consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms in the company of friends.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

In a recording from prison provided to human rights defenders, the student expressed hope of seeing a free Iran before a possible execution.

Call to stop the execution

Bahar Ghandehari, a representative of the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, called on the international community to urgently intervene to stop the sentence from being carried out. Separately, the court sentenced Amini to 12.5 years in prison for an alleged threat to national security.

According to the human rights organization HRANA, Iran's cyber police tracked down Amini after mass protests that took place in the country last winter. The verdict has drawn criticism from international organizations and human rights defenders, who call for the execution to be stopped and for a fair trial to be ensured.