Two women walk across an overpass in Tehran, Iran, December 7, 2025. VAHID SALEMI / AP
Iranian authorities have freed a woman who was condemned to hanging over the killing of her husband who she married while a child, in a case that sparked international concern over the plight of women sentenced to death in the Islamic republic, rights activists said on Friday, December 12.
Iranian authorities confirmed the freeing of Goli Kouhkan from prison in the northern Golestan province after her death sentence was revoked earlier this week under an accord with the dead man's family.
Kouhkan, a member of the Baluch minority without documentation and now aged 25, had been set to be executed this month over the 2018 killing of her husband who according to rights groups was violently abusive towards her and their child. Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) said that she had been spared execution and then released after so-called blood money – diyah under Iran's Sharia law – was raised to pay her husband's family for the loss of life.
Read more Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi arrested in Iran
