Twin Sisters Face Death Sentence After Iran Protest Arrests

Taraneh Rahimi was told prison guards would rape her sister, Romina, unless she signed a false confession. The 19-year-old twins were still in high school when masked men sent by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps pulled them from their beds in the middle of the night. Their crime: joining millions of Iranians in January’s mass protests against the regime. For four months, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, searched hospitals and state institutions for any news of her daughters. When she finally located them, the news was grim. The sisters had been arrested and, by the time of her first prison visit in May, they were unrecognizable. Now, the twins face a death sentence. Their case highlights the regime’s brutal crackdown on dissent, where even teenagers are subjected to threats of sexual violence and execution.