Iran executes woman who gave birth in custody: rights groups

Iranian authorities have executed a 28-year-old woman who gave birth to a child in custody, after she was convicted of murdering her husband, rights groups said on Tuesday.

Asma Zarei was hanged in Ardebil in northwestern Iran on May 20, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Hengaw rights groups said in separate statements.

The execution has not been reported by media inside Iran.

IHR said she had been arrested three years ago on suspicion of killing her husband with sleeping pills.

She was pregnant at the time of her arrest and gave birth in prison to a child who is now two years old, it said.

Before her execution she had asked her own mother to raise the child, IHR added.

There were no further details on the circumstances of the husband's death.

IHR and Hengaw said Zarei was the sixth woman executed this year by Iran, which executes more people annually than any other nation besides China, according to rights groups.

A report by IHR this year said Iran in 2025 executed at least 48 women, 21 of whom were put to death for murdering their husbands or fiances.

Rights groups say that in several cases those executed killed abusive husbands -- to whom they also may have been related before marriage -- and were also too poor to raise the so-called blood money to avoid execution.

US President Donald Trump had in April drawn attention to the cases of eight women allegedly on death row, through a repost on social media of a claim on X that they faced hanging.

Activists said some of those women in the images reposted by Trump did not face the death penalty or had already been released.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said Monday Iran's supreme court had overturned the death sentence against one of the women, Bita Hemmati, in a case connected to the January 2026 protests.