Arghavan Fallahi, a 25-year-old woman linked to the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK), was sentenced to death on 1 July by Branch 15 of Tehran's Revolutionary Court under Judge Abolqasem Salavati, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and allied opposition monitors1. The same monitors report that her lawyer, Elham Zeraatpisheh, received six years in Shiraz and a travel ban. Both accounts come from an avowedly anti-government network and have not been independently verified by wire services or Iranian state media.
The NCRI is the Paris-based political wing of the PMOI, an Iranian opposition group in exile, and it reports on executions and political prosecutions that Tehran does not publicly confirm. Salavati has spent a decade as the judge Western governments name in their sanctions listings for precisely this kind of death-penalty and political ruling. By the NCRI's account, the sentence lands in the same week Iran choreographs a six-nation funeral abroad to show it still commands respect.
Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based monitor, counted at least 134 executions in the Iranian month of Khordad, including a cluster around the June memorandum signing, a total it later revised up to 140. Those figures, too, come from monitors rather than Iranian courts. By opposition accounts the state projects legitimacy abroad this week while accelerating repression at home behind the mourning.
