Iran's Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence against Mozhdeh Hashemi Bazargani, a 27-year-old Red Crescent worker convicted of espionage based on her confession, a source told Iran International.
The ruling stands despite testimony that Hashemi Bazargani's confession was extracted through severe physical torture and that she was denied a lawyer of her own choosing throughout the proceedings. She is currently held at Qazvin Central Prison, in a city approximately 150 kilometers west of Tehran.
According to the report, the case began on April 4, when Iranian security forces raided Hashemi Bazargani's home at 2:30 in the morning. Officers cut through the door with a metal grinder while she was living there with her elderly and ill mother in the town of Alvand, near Qazvin. After her arrest, she was taken to the detention facility and charged with passing the location of a military site to "the enemy," a charge Hashemi Bazargani has consistently denied.
In an audio message from prison earlier this year, Hashemi Bazargani detailed the abuse she endured at the hands of interrogators. She said she was beaten brutally with pipes and batons on her head, neck and shoulders during prolonged and exhausting interrogation sessions.
The beatings broke her teeth and left her suffering from severe medical symptoms, including chronic dizziness, shortness of breath and heart problems. Despite the clear physical injuries on her body, authorities denied her medical treatment, and her repeated requests to be examined by a licensed physician or transferred to a forensic medicine institute to document the signs of violence were rejected.
The interrogators, she said in her testimony, applied heavy psychological and physical pressure to break her spirit and force her to confess to crimes she did not commit. "They pin a thousand charges on me and force me: everything we tell you, you must write and sign," she said in the recording.
Hashemi Bazargani said her interrogations were conducted while she was blindfolded, and that segments of her statements were cut and edited to assemble a propaganda video presenting her as a terrorist. The video was broadcast on Qazvin's state provincial television channel. Beyond the espionage charges, she was also accused of receiving funds from foreign sources, a claim she also denied.
Due to the harsh detention conditions and the psychological pressure applied to her, her physical and mental condition deteriorated significantly. Sources familiar with the details said Hashemi Bazargani suffered a series of seizures and lost consciousness several times, and was hospitalized and returned to prison before fully recovering. She also expressed deep concern for her elderly and ill mother, who was left alone in Alvand with no one to care for her.
Iran's judiciary has handed down a long series of harsh sentences this year, ranging from lengthy prison terms to death sentences, against dozens of citizens accused of espionage, passing information to foreign entities or contact with hostile states, a significant portion of them arrested following the protest wave that erupted in January. Human rights organizations and relatives of defendants note that confessions broadcast on state television are routinely obtained under severe physical and psychological torture, and that trials in these courts are held behind closed doors without public oversight or genuine examination of evidence.
