Death sentence of political prisoner Shahriar Bayat overturned by Supreme Court
Hengaw: Saturday, April 12, 2025
The death sentence of Shahriar Bayat, a political prisoner and one of the detainees of the “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom) movement, who had been sentenced to death on charges of Sabb al-nabi (blasphemy against the Prophet), has been overturned by Iran’s Supreme Court and referred to a parallel branch of the Tehran Provincial Criminal Court for reconsideration.
According to reports received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the Supreme Court’s Branch 39 overturned the death sentence of Shahriar Bayat—a 64-year-old political prisoner from Shahriar County, Tehran Province, currently held in Evin Prison—and referred the case to Branch 10 of Tehran’s Criminal Court One for retrial. The news was confirmed by Bayat’s lawyer, Amin Adel Ahmadian, via a post on his X (formerly Twitter) account.
Previously, Shahriar Bayat had been sentenced to death by Branch 13 of the Tehran Criminal Court One on charges of blasphemy. The ruling was based on images and posts shared online, and a report by the Tehran Intelligence Office derived from interrogations and the contents of Bayat’s mobile phone.
According to informed sources, the judges Saeed Sharafati and Ali Taghiyan rejected Bayat’s repentance. They ruled in favor of the death penalty, while another judge, Abolghasem MoradTalab, accepted the repentance and considered a prison sentence sufficient punishment.
In a separate case, Shahriar Bayat was also sentenced by Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court to 10 years in prison for “forming a group,” 5 years for “assembly and collusion,” 2 years for “insulting Khamenei and Khomeini,” and 1 year for “propaganda against the state,” totaling 18 years of discretionary imprisonment.
Bayat was arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence on Tuesday, October 25, 2022, during the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi protests in Shahriar, and was subsequently transferred to Greater Tehran Prison and later to Ward 6 of Evin Prison.
