Death Penalty News

Kneeling next to a ditch, deep in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, a 22-year-old woman draws her last breath in a 'desert court' before she is shot in the back with an AK-47. Her executioner? Likely her hardline militant husband, in what the Taliban consider an 'honour killing'.  It took less than an hour to decide Najiba had been adulterous – although it has been suggested this accusation was fabricated to protect her husband's reputation. Adultery is a crime that deserves capital punishment under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Sharia law. Fourteen years on from her death, little is known about her story, like many women slowly being erased from the fabric of Afghan society. 

The Iranian regime is increasingly using death sentences, corporal punishment, and judicial persecution against women—not only to silence dissent but also to intimidate a society demanding change. The Iranian regime has long viewed women as central to the country’s struggle for freedom—and therefore as central targets of repression. The nationwide uprising of 2022 fundamentally altered the political landscape, demonstrating that Iranian women were no longer merely participants in protest movements but among their principal organizers and symbols. Since then, the authorities have steadily intensified their campaign against women, expanding the use of executions, imprisonment, corporal punishment, and judicial intimidation.

The Taliban has passed a new law in Afghanistan allowing husbands to beat their wives as long as there is no serious bodily harm in a new criminal code published by the group.  The 90-page penal code, signed by Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban's supreme leader, sets out different levels of punishments for people depending on their standing in society.  Article 9 of the code divides Afghan society into four categories: religious scholars (ulama), the elite (ashraf), the middle class, and the lower class. 

Two Sudanese women have been sentenced to death by stoning in separate cases in Sudan, raising serious concerns about Sudan’s compliance with its international human rights obligations, particularly following its ratification of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT).

The Taliban said six people were executed during the 2025 calendar year under orders issued by the group’s leader, while at least 1,118 others were publicly flogged by Taliban courts across Afghanistan. Hamdullah Fitrat, the Taliban’s deputy spokesperson, said in a statement posted on X on Thursday that the executions were carried out in the provinces of Farah, Nimruz, Badghis and Khost after court rulings and approval by the Taliban leader. He said the punishments were imposed under the principle of retribution, or qisas .

The prosecution says the punishment is legal as it is provided for in the Penal Code and the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952. Three convicts are seeking to have their whipping sentences set aside by the Federal Court, following the death of Zaidi Abdul Hamid at Pokok Sena prison in Kedah last week. PUTRAJAYA: The prosecution urged the Federal Court today to dismiss an application by three convicts seeking exemption from whipping, arguing that their reliance on the recent death of another prisoner was purely speculative and without basis. Deputy public prosecutor Afzainizam Abdul Aziz said the trio’s review applications were influenced by media coverage surrounding the death of Zaidi Abdul Hamid at Pokok Sena prison in Kedah last week.

Two men were each publicly flogged 76 times this Tuesday in the conservative province of Aceh, Indonesia, after being found guilty of engaging in homosexual acts by a court that applies strict Islamic law. Homosexual relations are banned in Aceh, which enforces a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, but they are not illegal elsewhere in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country. "The criminalization of homosexual relations has no place in a just and humane society."

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city.  The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said.  'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

Iran’s new chastity and hijab law has drawn criticism from journalists and activists who warn it represents a new weapon in the state's arsenal against women which could authorize extreme punishments including the death penalty and flogging. The new Hijab and Chastity law, approved by parliament in September 2023 and finalized by the Guardian Council in September 2024, enforces compulsory hijab with harsher penalties, including hefty fines, longer prison sentences, and restrictions on employment and education.

A female student at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University stripped to her underwear on campus after university security personnel harassed her and tore her clothing for not wearing a headscarf. University officials later claimed she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital. Social media users now call her the "Science and Research Girl," after Tehran's Science and Research Campus, where the incident occurred. Known for its scenic mountainous location, this unit of the Islamic Azad University has become the focal point of a protest that sparked widespread attention online.

The Taliban’s Supreme Leader has vowed to start stoning women to death in public as he declared the fight against Western democracy will continue. “You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death,” said Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada in a voice message, aired on state television over the weekend, addressing Western officials.

RIYADH (Reuters) – Amnesty International criticised a leaked draft of Saudi Arabia’s first penal code on Tuesday, saying it would codify practices ranging from flogging to gender discrimination and urging changes to align it with international standards. In a report, Amnesty said the draft penal code “shatters the illusion” that de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman “is pursuing a truly reformist agenda” – a reference to social and economic changes he has introduced to modernise Saudi Arabia, attract investment and open up the country to tourism.

Manuel Guerrero Aviña, a dual British-Mexican citizen, has been arrested in Qatar after falling victim to a police-led Grindr sting. The former British Airways manager was detained on 4 February 2024 after replying to a fake message on the app. Gay sex in the conservative Muslim country is punishable by up to seven years in prison, and carries the death penalty under Sharia law, although this is unenforced.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban carried out a double public execution Thursday at a stadium in the country’s southeast, where relatives of the victims of stabbing deaths fired guns at two convicted men while thousands of people watched. The Taliban’s Supreme Court ruled that the two men were responsible for the stabbing deaths of two victims in separate attacks, according to a court statement. It identified the two as Syed Jamal from central Wardak province and Gul Khan from Ghazni — though it was unclear who carried out the stabbings, the two convicted men or others.

Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada last year ordered judges to fully implement all aspects of sharia -- including qisas punishment. GHAZNI: Two people were due to be publicly executed in a football stadium in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, provincial officials said, in the third and fourth death penalties carried out since the Taliban returned to power. The Ghazni province information and culture department said in a public notice that the execution was a qisas punishment -- equating to "an eye-for-an-eye" -- but did not initially provide details on the prisoners or their crimes.

Amidst mounting concerns over the fate of detained protester Reza Rasaei, Amnesty International issued a warning to Iranian authorities regarding his imminent execution. Rasaei, who denies any involvement, faces the specter of death following his conviction in connection with the killing of an agent during a protest in Kermanshah province, on November 18, 2022. The Iranian state media identified the agent as a member of the Revolutionary Guard, further complicating Rasaei's case. In addition to the disputed murder charge, Rasaei has been sentenced to one year in prison and 74 lashes for "disrupting public order."

The atrocities of the Iranian regime against Iran’s women have become so disgraceful that even the regime’s own media and analysts are becoming worried about their consequences. On January 13, the state-run Setareye Sobh Daily ran a piece titled, “Harsh punishments will cause discontent,” in which it warned about the social consequences of punishments such as flogging and wrote, “Flogging is a violent punishment and today, the society will not tolerate it.” On the same day, the state-run Etemad daily wrote, “[Such punishments] do more harm than good for the punished and society.”

All women in Iran have been required by law to cover their neck and head since shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution Iranian authorities have whipped a woman 74 times for “violating public morals” and fined her for not covering her head, the judiciary said. “The convicted, Roya Heshmati, encouraged permissiveness [by appearing] disgracefully in busy public places in Tehran,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said late on Saturday.

Cairo: A member of the Saudi advisory Shoura Council has proposed amending the kingdom’s anti-drug law to allow abolishing flogging as a form of punishment, a Saudi news portal has reported. Akhbar24, citing unspecified sources, said the proposal had been made by the council’s member Hadi Al Yammy. However, the proposal drew opposition from the council’s security committee, the sources added without elaborating.

Amnesty International has urged Iranian authorities to immediately quash the conviction and death sentence against Reza Razaei, a man accused of involvement in the killing of a security agent during nationwide protests last year. “If charged with a recognizable criminal offence, proceedings must meet international fair trial standards without recourse to the death penalty and exclude “confessions” obtained under torture,” the London-based human rights watchdog said on November 6. Razaei, a 34-year-old member from Iran’s oppressed Kurdish and Yaresan ethnic and religious minorities, was arrested on November 24, 2022 in Shahriar, Tehran province. He is currently being held in Dizel Abad prison in the southern province of Kermanshah.