Mohsen Eslamkhah, 19-year-old Kurdish protester, sentenced to death

Hengaw – Monday,  April 6, 2026

Mohsen Eslamkhah, a 19-year-old Kurd from Bukan and one of the protesters in the Woman, Life, Freedom (Jin, Jiyan, Azadi) movement, has been sentenced to death by the Iranian judiciary. He was still a child, only 16 years old, when Iranian authorities moved to arrest him.

Based on information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Eslamkhah was sentenced to death by Branch One of the Revolutionary Court in Mahabad on charges of “waging war against God” (moharebeh). Two other defendants in the same case, Mohammad Faraji and Raouf Sheikh-Maroufi, had previously been sentenced to death by the same court.

Eslamkhah, who had previously left Iran due to pressure from Iranian authorities and sought refuge in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, returned to Bukan in late May 2025. He was arrested on May 31, 2025, transferred to prison, and released temporarily after 11 days.

He was later re-arrested on Monday, February 23, 2026, and transferred to Bukan Central Prison, where the death sentence issued for him on February 17 was formally communicated.

During his detention in an Intelligence Department facility, he was subjected to pressure to extract a forced confession related to the alleged killing of a Basij member.

Mohsen Eslamkhah was 16 years old at the time of his participation in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Bukan, making his case one involving a child defendant. Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, individuals under the age of 18 are considered children, and the imposition of the death penalty or life imprisonment without the possibility of release is prohibited.