Melika Azizi: IRGC news agency denies death sentence for 18-year-old protester

Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, on Monday, 26 October 2026, denied reports that a death sentence had been issued for Melika Azizi, an 18-year-old woman arrested during the Dey uprising in the town of Masal in Gilan province. This is the first time a state outlet has officially acknowledged the arrest and conviction of the young protester.

Fars claimed that Melika Azizi was arrested during what the authorities call the Dey "riots" on a charge of "propaganda against the system" and sentenced to six months' discretionary imprisonment. According to the agency's claim, two months of her sentence have passed and she will be released in the coming days after serving half of it. Fars did not say which prison she is in, which court issued the sentence, or why, more than nine months after the Dey uprising, only two months of her sentence have been served.

Background of Melika Azizi's case

The first reports about Melika Azizi appeared last February–March on the social media of Iranians abroad. According to these reports, she was arrested in Masal on 9 January 2026 on charges of setting fire to symbols of the Islamic Republic, was charged with "moharebeh" and was under pressure to make a forced confession in Lakan prison in Rasht. The Italian organisation Hands Off Cain, which campaigns against the death penalty, warned on 21 March that she was at risk of execution, but stated at the time that no precise details of her trial were available.

To this day, no independent source, neither her family nor a lawyer, has confirmed either Fars's account or the earlier reports of a death sentence. The lack of access for families and independent media to protesters' case files has made it difficult to establish the real fate of those detained in the Dey uprising.

The authorities' claim and their record

Denials by state media have not matched the reality of cases in the past either. In recent months the Islamic Republic has executed a number of Dey protesters after closed trials without a lawyer of their choosing; among them in the case of Ilia Benrashid, whose family say IRGC intelligence fabricated the case. Until Melika Azizi is released and her family can speak freely, Fars's claim is only the one-sided account of the apparatus of repression.

For the first time, the Islamic Republic has admitted that Melika Azizi, an 18-year-old protester from Masal, was arrested and convicted during the Dey uprising.