Iran's Supreme Court has ordered a retrial for labor rights activist Sharifeh Mohammadi and lifted her death sentence, her lawyer said on Saturday.

"The Supreme Court... has overturned the verdict against my client," lawyer Amir Raisian was cited by the reformist Shargh daily as saying.

What do we know about the case?

Mohammadi had been accused of being a member of the Komala party, an Iraq-based Kurdish separatist group that is designated as a terrorist organization by Iranian authorities.

She was sentenced to death in early July following her arrest in Iran's northern Gilan region.

Kurdish people traditionally inhabit parts of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iran and northeastern Syria. Tehran has long accused exiled Iranian Kurdish groups based in Iraq of fomenting unrest in Iran.

Iran is still affected by months of protest triggered by the September 2022 death of Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini.  She died in police custody after she was accused of failing to properly observe the country's strict dress code for women. Multiple people have been sentenced to death over involvement in the protests.

Iran carries out second-highest amount of executions

Iran carries out the second-highest number of executions annually in the world, after China, according to the Amnesty International rights group.

Rights groups have also accused Tehran of disproportionately targeting Kurds, as well as the predominantly Sunni  Baloch ethnic minority in the country's southeast, for the death penalty. 

Inmates in over 20 Iranian prisons have been staging protests, including hunger strikes, against capital punishment for several months.

According to the Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA), at least 811 people were executed in Iran between October 10, 2023 and October 8, 2024.

sdi/dj (AFP, dpa)