A woman condemned to death in Iran for what supporters say was nothing more than filming a burning shop during protests has had her sentence overturned by the Supreme Court.
Prosecutors had claimed Leila Abolhasani, 43, was involved in setting the shop on fire during anti-regime protests in January that were met with a violent crackdown.
Ms Abolhasani, a nail technician with two children, was arrested in the city of Shahin Shahr, becoming one of an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people detained in Iran during the protests. She was found guilty of moharebeh, or enmity against God, and sentenced to death in August.
Campaigners outside Iran said she was merely taking videos of the unrest.
"When Ms Abolhasani was present at the protest site, one of the Ofogh Kourosh chain stores in Shahin Shahr was burning and she was filming the scene," the organisation Human Rights Activists in Iran quoted a source close to her family as saying.
It said she had been held at a prison in Isfahan. On Thursday, however, it reported that the Supreme Court had overturned her sentence and sent the case back to a lower court for retrial, in a rare victory for campaigners. Activists say no court ruling or evidence has been made public.
Iran has executed at least 34 people in cases linked to the January protests, Amnesty International said this month. Others have been put to death on espionage charges during the US and Israeli war on Iran.
A UN-backed fact-finding mission said last month that the response to the protests amounted to crimes against humanity. The unrest began in late 2025, triggered by high prices and the weakness of Iran's currency, before broadening into one of the biggest anti-regime revolts since the 1979 revolution.
Government personnel responded by firing into crowds from rooftops, trapping demonstrators in alleys with tear gas and carrying out killings in all 31 provinces of Iran, the UN mission said.
