'Be my voice': Iran sentences accounting student, 23, to death for blasphemy social media post
Najmeh Amini, the 23-year-old accounting student whose leaked prison recording in September revealed her pleading for international intervention as she faces execution for a social media post Iran deemed blasphemous.
Najmeh Amini, a 23-year-old accounting student, has been sentenced to death by an Iranian court for a social media post deemed to insult the prophet, after spending eight months in the notorious Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad. She was also handed a separate sentence of 12 years, six months and one day for acting against national security and spreading anti-regime propaganda. Rights groups warn Iran has executed at least 600 people this year, with the regime increasingly using capital punishment to crush dissent. A leaked voice recording from inside her cell in September revealed Amini pleading for international intervention.
Amini was arrested on 31 January during nationwide protests that Iran suppressed with a crackdown killing more than 7,000 people, with over 50,000 arrested.
Her defence argued she made the post in a hallucinatory state after consuming psychedelic mushrooms with friends, calling it a 'slip of the tongue' — the court rejected it.
Iran Human Rights director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam called sentencing a 23-year-old to death for a social media post 'an extremely alarming development'.
