On April 21, US President Donald Trump confirmed, through a post accompanied by photos, that eight women who had been arrested by the regime in Iran were about to be executed. On the other hand, accounts supporting the Islamic Republic considered that these images were “generated by artificial intelligence.” However, two non-governmental organizations confirmed the identity of these female demonstrators, verifying that only one of them was sentenced to death.

Published on: 04/28/2026 - 11:21

On his social media platform, “Truth Social,” US President Donald Trump announced that eight women in Iran, who were arrested by the Islamic Republic’s regime during demonstrations that were met with severe repression during the month of January 2026, were threatened with execution.

Trump's post, in which he directly asked the Iranian authorities to release these female prisoners, was accompanied by a number of photos, showing eight faces, that had previously been circulated on several accounts on the X platform.

“Trump saved eight people who were generated through artificial intelligence.”

But in the hours that followed the publication of Trump’s message, several accounts, most of them supporters of the regime in Tehran, confirmed that these women were not real, and that their images were generated using artificial intelligence tools. “Trump begs Iranian leaders not to execute eight AI-generated women,” wrote an anti-Israel account owner, whose X post received more than two million views.

This narrative was supported by the Iranian authorities on April 22: after Donald Trump claimed the day after his first post that the eight women had not been executed thanks to him, the Iranian embassy in South Africa responded by saying that he “saved eight women who were born through artificial intelligence.”

Real female protesters, including one who was sentenced to death

In this media battle, both Donald Trump and the Iranian embassy in South Africa spread false news. On the one hand, the eight women are real figures. On the other hand, only one of them was sentenced to death.

The identity of these women was identified by two non-governmental organizations known for counting those killed and arrested in Iran between the months of December 2025 and January 2026. The two organizations are “Rights activists in Iran HRA” and the Organization for Human Rights in Iran (IHR), which rely on field sources.

In contact with the France 24 Observers editorial team, the assistant director of the non-governmental organization HRI said that these women are “real” and were actually arrested during the demonstrations in Iran. However, she explained that only one of them, named Bita Hemmati, was sentenced to death, according to the information obtained by this organization.

This matches the information obtained by Iran Human Rights, which was contacted by the fake news verification organization Lead Stories.

In addition, the news of Beta Hemmati being sentenced to death was widely circulated in several media outlets over the past few days, while other photos match the photo of her published by Donald Trump.

But what about the fate of the remaining seven women? The two previously mentioned NGOs agree that Mahbouba Shabani was arrested on February 2 and placed in Mashhad prison. Meanwhile, the "Iran Human Rights Watch" organization confirms that Shabani is also threatened with the death penalty, just like Diana Taherabadi, the 16-year-old teenager, who was arrested last January.

The HRA and IHR organizations also confirm the disappearance of demonstrator Bana Movahedi following the demonstrations that witnessed the greatest degree of repression and violence on January 9.

According to IHR, the 37-year-old emergency department doctor was released, which also applies to Golnaz Naraghi and Venus Hosseininejad, unlike Ensia Najani, who is still in prison, according to what HRA confirmed. Meanwhile, the fate of the teenager, Ghazal Jalandari, who was arrested in the city of Yasuj on January 20, remains unknown.

HRA points out that there is no news about a supposed death sentence against her, in any case.

Conflicts in publications by Iranian embassies

In any case, it seems that the South African embassy in Iran wanted to confuse the accusations that are being widely circulated on the Internet despite knowing that these women are actually real. This is because about an hour before the post accusing US President Donald Trump of talking about personalities generated through artificial intelligence tools, the Iranian embassy in Sierra Leone responded to Trump via a post on its account on the X platform in which it said that “four of the eight women” had been “released several weeks ago,” which constitutes confirmation of the existence of these women.

This conflict between the two embassies reflects the online media war that the Iranian regime is waging against the United States, even if it comes to manipulating the truth.

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