On April 21, US President Donald Trump stated, when releasing his portraits, that eight women detained by the Iranian regime were about to be executed. Some pro-Iran accounts maintain that these photos have been "generated by AI." However, the identity of the protesters has been confirmed by two NGOs. Of them, only one has been sentenced to death.

First modification: 04/24/2026 - 22:59

Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social social network that eight Iranian women, detained by the Iranian regime during the protests that were harshly repressed in January 2026, faced the death penalty.

His message, in which he directly asked the Iranian authorities to release these prisoners, was accompanied by a gallery of portraits showing eight faces, already spread online by several X accounts.

"Trump has saved eight people generated by AI"

However, in the hours that followed, several accounts, often supportive of the Iranian regime, claimed that these women did not exist and that their portraits had been created using artificial intelligence (AI).

"Trump pleads with Iranian leaders not to execute eight AI-generated women," said one anti-Israel account, whose post on X was viewed more than two million times.

This version was even supported by the Iranian authorities on April 22: after Donald Trump stated the day after his first publication that the eight women had finally not been sentenced to death thanks to his request, the Iranian embassy in South Africa responded by stating that he had just "saved eight people generated by AI."

Real protesters, one of them sentenced to death

In this information battle, both Donald Trump and the Iranian embassy in South Africa have spread false information: on the one hand, the eight women really exist; On the other hand, only one of them faces the death penalty.

These eight women have been identified by the two main NGOs that have tallied deaths and arrests during the December 2025 and January 2026 demonstrations in Iran, Human Rights Activist in Iran (HRA) and Iran Human Rights (IHR), based on sources on the ground.

Contacted by our editorial team, the deputy director of HRA, Skylar Thomson, confirmed that these women are "real" and that they were detained during the demonstrations, but specifies that only one of them, Bita Hemmati, has been sentenced to death according to information from her NGO.

These data coincide with those of Iran Human Rights, contacted by the verification medium Lead Stories.

On the other hand, Bita Hemmati's death sentence has already been widely reported in numerous media outlets in recent days, and other photos of her coincide with the portrait that Donald Trump has released.

What happened to the other seven protesters? The two NGOs agree that Mahboubeh Shabani was arrested on February 2 and imprisoned in Mashhad prison. The IHR further states that she also faces a possible death sentence, as does Diana Taher Abadi, a 16-year-old girl arrested in January.

HRA and IHR also confirm the disappearance of the protester Panah Movahedi after the demonstrations were repressed with greater violence on January 9.

According to the IHR, the 37-year-old emergency doctor Golnaz Naraghi and Venus Hosseinnejad would have been released, unlike Ensieh Nejati, who remains in prison according to the HRA.

For her part, the fate of 16-year-old teenager Ghazal Ghalandari, detained in Yasuj on January 20, is uncertain. In any case, HRA indicates that it has no information about a possible death penalty.

In the case of these protesters, the photos of them circulating on the Internet also coincide with the portrait published by Donald Trump.

Contradictions between embassies

The Iranian embassy in South Africa seems, in any case, to have wanted to take advantage of accusations that had gone viral on the Internet, knowing that these women existed.

Almost an hour before the publication in which Donald Trump was accused of talking about people generated by AI, the Iranian embassy in Sierra Leone had responded in X to the head of state, stating this time that "four of the eight women" had been "released weeks ago", in fact confirming the existence of these people.

A contradiction that symbolizes the online information battle waged by the Iranian regime against the United States, although this implies playing with reality.

Adapted from its original French version

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