Oathkeeper

🚨BREAKING: Iranian authorities have executed Marzieh Neyri (also reported as Marziyeh Nayeri), a young woman who claimed she acted in self-defense against a sexual assault.

Neyri was forced into marriage at age 17 under family pressure. In 2021, when she was 18, she said one of her husband’s business associates attempted to sexually assault her after drinking. She grabbed a kitchen knife to defend herself. Her husband was killed during the confrontation.

She turned herself in days later. Iranian courts rejected her self-defense claim. The surviving associate denied her account and portrayed her as the aggressor. Under qisas (retribution) law, she was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out at dawn on August 8, 2026, at Qazvin Central Prison (Choobindar).

Human rights groups note she was one of at least 14 women executed in Iran so far in 2026. Her case has drawn comparisons to earlier self-defense cases, including that of Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was hanged in 2014 after killing a man she said tried to rape her.

Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, proving certain sexual crimes can require four male witnesses. Women’s testimony often carries less weight, and self-defense claims by women in such cases are frequently rejected.