Iranian Child Bride on Death Row Needs £80,000

Goli Kouhkan, now 25, was married at 12 to a cousin, became pregnant at 13 and says she endured years of physical and emotional abuse. She was arrested in 2018 at age 18 after a fight in which her husband died and has spent seven years on death row in Gorgan Central Prison after being convicted under qisas. Campaigners say she is illiterate, was interrogated without a lawyer and was forced to sign a confession. Under Iranian law a victim’s family can pardon a convicted killer in exchange for blood money; Kouhkan has been given a December deadline to raise about 10 billion tomans (roughly £80,000 / ~$100,000) and reportedly must leave Gorgan or face execution if the sum is not paid. Activists’ social-media and fundraising efforts (including #SaviGoli) have raised only a tiny fraction of the required sum, and human-rights groups say her case—an undocumented member of the marginalized Baluch minority, a woman and a poor person—illustrates systemic discrimination, the prevalence of child marriage and weak legal protections against domestic violence in Iran.