03 April 2022 :
Zarkhatoon Mazarzehi, a Baluch woman, sentenced to death.
According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, Branch One of the Kerman Revolutionary Court has sentenced a Baluch woman called Zarkhatoon Mazaheri to death for drug-related offences.
According to relatives, she was notified of the judgement on March 15 while behind bars in Kerman Central Prison and has already appealed the decision which will be re-examined by the Supreme Court.
Zarkhatoon Mazarzehi, born in 1977, is from Saravan in Sistan and Baluchistan province and resident in Khash, according to Haal Vash. A widowed mother of one, she was arrested at a checkpoint in Kerman province on 30 December 2017.
Speaking to Iran Human Rights, a relative said: “She didn’t have access to a defence lawyer at the time of arrest. Her family are just now raising money to hire a lawyer for her.”
“Zarkhatoon Mazarzehi has made no confessions. She didn’t know anything about the drugs they found. She had agreed to carry raw materials for cosmetics which she believed to have issues at customs, and has said at every opportunity that she wasn’t carrying drugs. Ms Mazarzehi was the breadwinner, her husband died of tuberculosis,” the source added.
