In Iran, 25-year-old Goli Kukhkan, sentenced to death for killing her husband, has been pardoned. The family of the deceased has received compensation from her.
The Guardian writes about this.
Kukhkanʼs lawyer said that the manʼs family agreed to reduce the compensation amount from $100 000 to $80 000 — the money was collected by December. Donations for Kukhkan were collected by the charitable organization Qasim Child Foundation.
Now the woman wants to reunite with her 11-year-old son, whom she hasnʼt seen for seven years. However, the manʼs relatives may forbid them from seeing each other. Under Iranian law, the boy is entitled to $20 000 in compensation.
Goli Kukhkan was married off to her cousin at the age of 12, and gave birth to a son at the age of 13. She lived in an environment of systemic violence, running away from her parents, but her father refused her shelter.
When she was 18, she saw a man beating their child, so she called his cousin for help. During the argument, her husband was fatally injured. Kukhkan and her late husbandʼs cousin were sentenced to hang.
The woman has been on death row for the past seven years. By law, she could be pardoned if she collects compensation for the deceasedʼs family. Another condition of the pardon is that she must leave the city after her release.
At least 241 women were executed in Iran between 2010 and 2024, 114 of them sentenced to death for killing their partners. Many of these women were victims of domestic violence or child marriage and acted in self-defense.
- In February 2025, Iranʼs Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pardoned two female journalists, Niloufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, who had covered the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in 2022 after being detained by the morality police for wearing an "inappropriate" hijab.
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