Tears wouldn’t stop falling from Naghmeh Rajabi’s face as she spoke of her aunt. 

Engineering student Asfaneh Rajabi was just 22 when faceless grunts of Iran’s Ayatollah regime raised their guns and shot her dead in 1981. 

She was killed for having the courage to question the political and religious norms that have plagued the nation since the Iranian revolution, her niece revealed to the Daily Mail. 

Although Asfaneh was first detained by the forces of Ruhollah Khomeini, who was Iran’s Supreme Leader at the time, she was able to escape, only to be re-captured and later executed.

But before this, her family saw she had been horrifically tortured, Naghmeh said. 

The programme manager and activist stated: ‘My older sister recalls seeing her torture marks after her time in prison. She shared with me everything Asfaneh went through.

‘Her feet had become black, swollen, and oozing.’   

Sadly, the situation for women in Iran has drastically worsened since Asfaneh’s passing. Under Ali Khamenei, who has been the nation’s Supreme Leader for the past 36 years, the number of executed women in Iran has increased significantly. 

Dissidents attribute this to the regime’s growing insecurity, highlighted by mass protests in recent years, especially the Mahsa Amini uprisings that erupted nationwide in 2022 after the suspicious death of a young woman accused of wearing her hijab ‘improperly’.

Naghmeh Rajabi (pictured) told the Daily Mail of her family’s horrific treatment by the Iranian state

Afsaneh Rajabi (pictured) was executed at just 22 for speaking out against the regime

Since then, the number of women executed in Iran each year has more than doubled. 

In 2022, 15 women faced execution. In the first nine months of 2025, 38 women have already been executed, as reported by the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI). Between July 30 and September 30, the regime executed 14 women, averaging one execution every four days.

October 10 is World Day against the Death Penalty, an event which will see groups across the world to petition states to abolish capital punishment. 

Naghmeh told the Daily Mail that her family has consistently suffered under the Ayatollah regime. 

Her other aunt, Zahra, suffered a similar fate. As a student at the School of Architecture of Tehran’s Melli University, which was renamed to honour one of the Iranian Revolution’s top figures, she became politically active against the regime. 

After escaping the country, Zahra fled to Istanbul, Turkey, where she worked to help Iranian refugees in similar dire straits. 

But in 1996, Iranian assassins murdered her in cold blood. 

She said: ‘I was actually 11 when Zahra was assassinated. I remember that. I was trying to sort of comprehend what was happening. I asked my family: “Why would anyone try to kill my auntie?”

‘My family explained that she was a revolutionary and freedom fighter who fought for democracy, and that’s why they killed her.’ 

Naghmeh said though she never got to meet her, she still thinks about Asfaneh: ‘She was the youngest child. The stories I hear is that she was really lively. She would sing all the time, and joke around. She was just so positive, and kind and generous. I felt very connected.

‘I’ve never met her, but every time I think about her I’m so moved by her bravery.’ 

Both of her aunts lie in her thoughts. ‘I see a lot of lot of myself in them. They were lively, they were young, they were passionate about life’, she said. 

Asfaneh and Zahra are just two of the countless women who needlessly died at the hands of the state, and it is feared that many more will suffer the same fate. 

Zahra Rajabi (pictured) was assassinated in Istanbul in 1996 

Sadredin Sadidi, an Iranian activist, was killed in 1988 for his work against the regime

The NCRI, which works in exile in France and Albania, says that women are largely executed for two reasons in Iran. 

The first is drug trafficking. Under a broken economic system, and often forced by their husbands, impoverished women unable to make a living any other way are made to carry drugs across the nation. 

Mafia-style networks that have alleged connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s military, use these women to traffic their drugs.

When they are inevitably caught, they are handed death sentences. 

The other is premeditated murder of a spouse. Under Iranian law, women are subject to their husbands’ wills and are unable to divorce them. 

As a result, the NCRI says, these women are forced to defend themselves in all too frequent instances of domestic violence. 

But the Ayatollah regime has choked all citizens in Iran for decades, regardless of gender. 

Safora Sadidi Mohammadi, a human rights activist working with the NCRI, told the Daily Mail that seven of her relatives, including her father, have been executed by the regime. 

Safora, who has spent the last two decades working to stop the human rights crisis in Iran, was six years old when she lost her father, Sadredin Sadidi, in 1988, but only learned he had died two years later. 

She told the Daily Mail: ‘It was one of the heaviest burdens of my childhood, of course. It’s a pain that never leaves you. It resurfaces with every announcement of another life-taking in Iran.

Safora Sadidi Mohammadi (pictured) told the Daily Mail that seven members of her family have been executed by Iran

Sadredin was killed in Iran for daring to speak out against the Ayatollah regime

‘I don’t think you find any Iranians who have not lost one of their loved ones under this regime, and who have not suffered under this brutal dictatorship, this religious dictatorship of Iran.’ 

Her mother, wary of the lasting damage family trauma can have, told her that her father was simply away on a work trip. 

”My mother tried to hide many things from me, but I understood that my father was very active. Both my parents were very active for human rights, and I think for my both families. But, of course, at that age, I did not understand very much.

‘When we fled Iran, and when I grew older, I understood more about what happened in Iran, and why everything was like that.

‘Khomeini, his name brought fear to my childhood. I felt he was the devil, even as a child. I understood that he’s really a monster.

‘I knew that my family had to flee Iran, and when we escaped, because I was only 6, my mother didn’t want to tell me that my father had been executed.

‘It took a while before she could finally tell me.’ 

She eventually learned that he had been badly tortured by the state.   

Executions are up across the board in Iran. 

According to the NCRI, 578 people were executed in 2022. In the first nine months of 2025, nearly 1,200 have been executed.

Iranian demonstrators taking to the streets of the capital Tehran on September 21, 2022

A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini during a demonstration on Istiklal avenue in Istanbul on September 20, 2022

The UN has said the staggering escalation violates international human rights law. 

Experts said: ‘The sheer scale of executions in Iran is staggering and represents a grave violation of the right to life. 

‘With an average of more than nine hangings per day in recent weeks, Iran appears to be conducting executions at an industrial scale that defies all accepted standards of human rights protection.”

Both women said their connection to their long-dead families is what keep them going. 

Naghmeh said: ‘I think that’s why I have such a big connection to it, even now, after all these years. My family and I left Iran and I could have just got on with my life like many people. But, I do feel a sense of responsibility.

‘You carry the pain, especially if you can’t express that outwardly. It also teaches you a lot about resilience, it teaches you a lot about bravery, about what’s possible, about how fortunate you are, and always staying positive in times of difficulty.

‘They’re kind of my guiding light. I just look at these extraordinary people, the amazing people that are part of the Iranian resistance, and just say: if they can do it, if they can push through, if they can look the evil in the eye and fight with the way that they’ve done for godless how many years, then surely I can.

‘There is just such a surge of executions now happening in Iran, which is just terrifying. The Iranian regime has been doing this since they came to power.

‘You see it being repeated today. So many people get executed, they’re just normal people like you and me, who want nothing but freedom and democracy and they’re being robbed of that.

People gathering next to a burning motorcycle in the capital Tehran on October 8, 2022 amid a wave of unrest triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody a month prior

A demonstrator raises his arms and makes the victory sign during a protest for Mahsa Amini, in Tehran on September 19, 2022

And Safora told the Daily Mail: ‘I think a lot about, not only my father, but all these 120,000 who were the bravest in our country, intellectuals. Many of them had the very best opportunity to have good lives, but they sacrificed that for freedom and democracy.

‘I think it’s really worth it, you know? To give freedom to your people. In the future, history will ask what we did for the freedom of our country, and I want to be one of those who are making change.

‘That was one of the reasons that I decided to become an activist; To devote my life, my time and my energy in this cause of freedom and democracy.

‘This is what I want for the next generation of my country, to live in freedom, like we have here.’ 

Both also said they know in their heart of hearts that the Ayatollah regime won’t last forever. 

Safora said: ‘Regime change by the Iranian people and their organized resistance is the only way that we can have a free and democratic Iran. The regime has never been so weak as it is today, and has never been as aggressive in executing the people. They are trying to carry out a silent massacre right now in Iran with these executions.’ 

Naghmeh said: ‘The Iranian regime is at its weakest point. That is the reason why there’s such a surge in executions. It’s almost like a wounded animal.’