A 25-year-old Iranian woman and child marriage survivor who had been sentenced to death for killing her abusive husband has been spared execution after the victim’s family agreed to forgive her, the judiciary's news agency reported.
Goli Kouhkan hails from Iran's Baluch minority in the country's southeast, where poverty and traditional social practices present special challenges for women's rights in the Islamic theocracy.
Mizan News Agency, the outlet affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, published a video on Tuesday showing the late husband's relatives formally recording their forgiveness in the presence of judicial officials and signing the necessary documents.
In the video, a local judiciary official says all the legal formalities for carrying out the execution had been completed, but mediation efforts led to a settlement and the victim’s family ultimately chose to pardon her.
The victim’s father also appears in the footage, saying they decided to forgive her after repeated requests from mediators and discussions with his wife.
“The family of the murder victim, with extensive cooperation from the provincial prosecutor’s office and the Dispute Resolution Council, and with both financial and moral support from philanthropists, has taken a magnanimous step and relinquished its legal and religious right,” the official said.
He did not clarify how much money — if any — was ultimately paid to the husband’s family. However, according to UN experts, the family had previously agreed to forgo the execution only if she paid 100 billion rials (about $80,000) in blood money, “an amount considerably higher than the recommended rate and far beyond her reach, especially as an undocumented woman who has been rejected by her family.”
Last week, UN human rights experts urged Iran to halt her execution, saying Iranian courts "failed to consider the sustained pattern of abuse or assess specific circumstances surrounding her actions."
Kouhkan was forced into marriage at the age of 12 to her cousin and endured years of physical and psychological abuse while working as a farm laborer, they said.
According to the experts, which include Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran Mai Sato, Kouhkan gave birth at home at 13 without medical care. Attempts to escape the marriage failed because of her lack of legal identification documents and societal pressure.
In May 2018, her husband beat both her and their five-year-old son. After a relative was called to help, a confrontation ensued that resulted in her husband’s death, according to the experts.
The experts said at least 241 women were executed between 2010 and 2024, including 114 sentenced to death for homicide, many of whom had allegedly killed a husband or intimate partner after years of domestic violence or child marriage.
In Iran, the legal marriage age for girls is 13, and even younger with a guardian’s and judge’s approval. Rights groups say girls and women have little protection from domestic violence, and women face major obstacles when trying to divorce.
