UN opposes death sentence for Najmeh Amini, a 23-year-old student

On Friday, 16 October 2026, the United Nations opposed the death sentence for Najmeh Amini, a 23-year-old accounting student held in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad. Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, answering a question from Voice of America, said the Secretary-General opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and therefore also opposes the death sentence for Najmeh Amini.

Mr Haq also stressed the need to respect the student's right to a fair trial. This is the UN's first official reaction to a case that has had wide coverage in international media in recent days.

Najmeh Amini's death sentence for a social media post

According to human rights bodies, a criminal court in Mashhad has sentenced Najmeh Amini to death on a charge of "sabb al-nabi", or "insulting the Prophet of Islam", over something she posted on social media. In a separate case before the Revolutionary Court she has also been sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison on charges of "acting against national security" and "propaganda against the system". The death sentence is not final and can be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Najmeh Amini was first arrested by the security forces during the January uprising and was arrested again in February, after the cyber police monitored her online activity. The content of the post for which she was sentenced to death has not been made public.

In an audio file released last month and attributed to her, Najmeh Amini asks human rights bodies to look into her case and to be her voice.

Warning from human rights bodies

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights, called the issuing of a death sentence against this student an extremely worrying development and urged the international community to demand that it be overturned. The organisation warned that the case could open the way to the spread of the death penalty against peaceful expression online.

The last recorded execution in Iran on a charge of insulting the sacred dates back to 8 May 2023, when Yousef Mehrdad and Sadrollah Fazeli were executed. Najmeh Amini's sentence was issued while the Islamic Republic's execution machine works without pause; Iran Human Rights has recorded at least 532 executions from the start of 2026 to the end of August alone. António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, had also earlier, in his latest report, spoken of unprecedented repression in Iran and called for an immediate halt to executions.

The UN said it opposes the death sentence for Najmeh Amini, a 23-year-old student sentenced over a social media post.