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UN experts and 400 prominent women have urged Iran not to execute Zahra Tabari, a 67-year-old electrical engineer and women’s rights activist.

Ms Tabari was arrested in April and accused of collaborating with a banned opposition group, the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), according to her family.

In October, she was convicted of “armed rebellion” by a Revolutionary Court in Rasht after a trial via video link that lasted less than 10 minutes. Her family said the verdict was based on extremely limited and unreliable evidence: a piece of cloth bearing the words “Woman, Resistance, Freedom”, and an unpublished audio message.

Iranian authorities have not yet commented on the case.

At least 51 other people are known to be facing the death penalty in Iran after being convicted of national security offences including armed rebellion, as well as “enmity against God”, “corruption on Earth” and espionage, according to the UN experts.

The UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteurs on human rights in Iran, violence against women and arbitrary executions, as well as the five members of the working group on discrimination against women and girls, warned in a joint statement that Ms Tabari’s case showed “a pattern of serious violations of international human rights law”.

She was arrested during a raid on her home without a judicial warrant, and was interrogated for a month while held in solitary confinement and pressured to confess to taking up arms against the state and to membership in an opposition group, according to the experts.

Ms Tabari was denied access to a lawyer of her choosing and was represented by a court-appointed lawyer, they said, adding that her death sentence was issued immediately after a brief hearing.

“The severe procedural violations in this case – including the unlawful deprivation of her liberty, the denial of effective legal representation, the extraordinarily brief trial, the lack of adequate time to prepare a defence, and the use of evidence that appears insufficient to support a charge of [armed rebellion] – render any resulting conviction unsafe,” they said.

They also noted that international law restricted the death penalty to the most serious crimes, meaning intentional killing.

“To execute Tabari under these circumstances would constitute arbitrary execution,” the experts added. “Criminalising women’s activism for gender equality and treating such expression as evidence of armed rebellion constitutes a grave form of gender discrimination.”

More than 400 prominent women – including several Nobel laureates, the former presidents of Switzerland and Ecuador, and former prime ministers of Finland, Peru, Poland and Ukraine – also signed a public appeal for Ms Tabari’s immediate release on Tuesday.

“Iran is today the world’s number one executioner of women per capita. Zahra’s case lays bare this terror: in Iran, daring to hold a sign declaring women’s resistance to oppression is now punishable by death,” it said.

The appeal was organised by Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran, a UK-based group that represents the families of the thousands of political prisoners who were executed in Iran three decades ago.

Another Iranian woman, Kurdish rights activist and social worker Pakhshan Azizi, is also facing the death penalty on the same charge as Ms Tabari.

UN experts have previously said Ms Azizi’s sentencing appeared to be “solely related to her legitimate work as a social worker, including her support for refugees in Iraq and Syria”.

According to Iran Human Rights (IHR), at least 1,426 people – including 41 women – were executed in Iran in the first 11 months of 2025 – a 70% increase on the same period last year.

Almost half of those put to death as of the end of November were convicted of drug-related offences, while 53 were convicted of national security offences, the Norway-based group said.

The nearly 90,000 refugees who fled to Burundi after the recent escalation of violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo face dire conditions in cramped camps with limited access to food and water, aid agencies say

Congolese M23 rebels recently captured the city of Uvira, near the Burundi border, and the fighting forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. The rebels say they have since withdrawn.

Medical charity MSF, which has been providing emergency help, has raised concerns about the worsening humanitarian situation.

The UN’s refugee agency, UNCHR, said those especially affected are children and women – including pregnant women – some who reported going without food for days.

MSF said it had been treating an average of 200 people daily since the refugees started arriving in Burundi in the last two weeks.

“We see people in a state of distress, despair and exhaustion. We see women who gave birth while fleeing, some that give birth in our clinic,” said Zakari Moluh, the MSF project co-ordinator describing the situation in Ndava, north-west Burundi.

The charity has warned of the risk of the “spread of epidemic diseases such as cholera and measles, and a catastrophic increase of malaria cases” among vulnerable people.

Meanwhile, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) says it is increasing its life-saving aid to over 210,000 of the most vulnerable people displaced by the DR Congo violence.

It notes that about half a million people have been forced from their homes in South Kivu province since the beginning of December.

The WFP says it is supporting 71,000 new Congolese arrivals to Burundi with hot meals in transit centres.

It adds that services across the province are on the brink of collapse, as “health centres have been looted, medicines are unavailable, and schools remain closed”. The agency has called for urgent funding to be able to continue providing food aid in the next three months.

The capture of Uvira at the beginning of the month extended the M23’s territorial gains in eastern DR Congo after they had earlier captured the major cities of Goma and Bukavu.

The rebels said they would pull out of Uvira last week under pressure from the US, but their reported withdrawal has been disputed by Congolese authorities.

The US brokered a peace deal between the Congolese and Rwandan governments aimed at ending the long-running conflict in DR Congo. The US accuses Rwanda of backing the M23 rebels, which it denies.

The rebels were not signatories to that peace deal but they have been part of a parallel peace process led by Qatar, a US ally that has strong ties with Rwanda.

The Libyan army chief has been killed in an air crash in Turkey, Libya’s prime minister has said.

Gen Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad and four others were on board a Falcon 50 aircraft flying out of the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Tuesday evening.

In a post on X, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said signal with the business jet was lost at 20:52 local time (17:52 GMT) – about 42 minutes after it took off from Ankara’s airport.

The Tripoli-bound jet had issued an emergency landing request before contact was lost. The plane’s wreckage was later found south-west of Ankara, and an investigation is now under way into what caused the crash.

In a later post on X, Yerlikaya wrote that police had spotted the debris near the village of Kesikkavak, in the Haymana district.

He said the “public will be informed of further developments”.

In Libya, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the prime minister of the country’s internationally-recognised Government of National Unity, said he had received news of the deaths of Gen Haddad and other senior Libyan military officials on board the jet.

The prime minister called it a “great loss” for the nation, saying Libya had “lost men who served their country with sincerity and dedication”.

Gen Haddad and his team had been in Turkey for talks aimed at further strengthening military and security co-operation between the two countries.