Iran HRM, the diaspora rights monitor Iran Human Rights Monitor, documented at least 30 women detained over the 2025-26 protests in a basement ward of Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad, north-eastern Iran, in a report dated Thursday 28 May1. Several face moharebeh charges, the offence of "enmity against God", which carries the death penalty. The monitor described the ward, named the "Peace Ward", as a cramped, unventilated basement.
The detentions add a gendered dimension to the wartime repression already tallied by Amnesty. The same capital charge that reaches international attention through individual cases is being applied to a documented group of women at once. Holding 30 women on enmity-against-God charges in degraded basement conditions points to systematic use of the country's harshest charge against protesters during the conflict, and it raises the prospect of mass capital exposure rather than a handful of headline sentences.
