Pedram Madani: The AI Engineer Iran Promised to Free, Then Hanged

For six years, authorities of the Islamic Republic assured Pedram Madani and his family that silence would save his life.

They promised the 41-year-old software engineer that his espionage case was being resolved. They told his mother, a retired teacher, that speaking out publicly would guarantee his execution.

On May 28, Iran executed Madani anyway.

Madani, who specialized in artificial intelligence, was arrested in 2019 on charges of spying for Israel.

Over the years, interrogators repeatedly told him that his case would be resolved favorably if his family stayed quiet, according to sources who spoke to IranWire.

Iran’s Supreme Court overturned Madani’s death sentence three times before finally confirming it on the fourth attempt.

Each reversal fed both the prisoner and his family renewed hope, reinforcing interrogators’ promises of eventual freedom.

“Every time his interrogators came, he would go talk to them,” filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof wrote on Instagram, quoting one of Madani’s cellmates. “He said they told me, ‘Don’t worry, we know an injustice has been done to you. We’ll fix it ourselves.’”

Three months before his execution, one of Madani’s interrogators visited him in prison and instructed him to “submit another request for retrial because the case will be fixed,” a source said.

Instead, authorities transferred him to Qezel Hesar Prison and executed him shortly after.

According to human rights advocates and legal experts, the tactics used against Madani’s family follow a well-documented pattern.

Authorities use a combination of explicit threats such as “If you speak out, we’ll execute him” and promises of freedom conditional on silence.

“Often, the families forced into silence are not politically active and are uninformed,” said a source familiar with several similar cases.

“They’re threatened with the arrest of other family members. It’s a calculated mix of threats, promises, warnings, deception, and false hope to ensure no information about the case leaks out.”

This strategy often targets families employed by the government. Both of Madani’s parents were teachers, making them especially vulnerable to economic and institutional pressure.

Espionage charges also carry a social stigma that discourages media coverage and public sympathy.

“In these cases, the label of ‘spy’ gives Iranian domestic media an excuse not to report or conduct interviews,” the source added.

The campaign to silence Madani was so effective that, even hours after his execution, no public photographs of him existed. The only image eventually released was a black-and-white photo shared by a human rights group on Instagram.

Former cellmates described Madani as calm and always smiling during his time in Evin Prison.

Olivier Grondeau, a French national who spent over two years in Evin, said he and Madani would share pizza on Fridays. Despite facing four death sentences, Grondeau recalled, Madani “always had a smile on his face.”

Louis Arnaud, another former French prisoner, referred to Madani as a brother in an article for IranWire.

“He was my master in the art of wood, my companion of soul, my refuge,” Arnaud wrote. “He, who knew how to reignite the embers of my smile. He taught me how to be a man and carved for me the paths of virtue, courage, and dignity.”

The only public plea for Madani came in a short video released by his mother two days before his execution.

In it, she described her son as “faithful and believing” and said he “loves his country.” She also revealed that her husband had died of a heart attack while praying, devastated by their son’s imprisonment.

She spoke of “extensive ambiguities in the judicial process” and urged authorities to “allow her son to return to life.”

She added that Madani was denied the right to choose his own lawyer. Even with a court-appointed attorney, his death sentence had been overturned multiple times by the Supreme Court.

According to jurist and legal advisor Musa Barzin, Iranian law does not prohibit families from publicizing their relatives’ cases.

“Making it public is not a crime at all. In fact, it is recommended,” Barzin said. “Court verdicts are not confidential. There might be a confidential letter in a case, but court verdicts, whether primary or appellate, are not classified.”

Nonetheless, authorities routinely claim that publicity will harm the case. “In security and political cases, the intelligence services and judiciary will definitely tell you that going public will cause problems,” Barzin explained.

The deception extends beyond legal misrepresentation. According to Barzin, fear, threats, and even cultural shame combine to enforce silence. “Some families don’t even speak out after an execution.”

Madani’s case bears striking resemblance to that of Mohsen Langarneshin, a network security expert executed less than a month earlier on similar espionage charges.

Authorities persuaded Langarneshin’s family to tell neighbors and relatives that he had traveled abroad, rather than admit he was imprisoned.

As with Madani, details of Langarneshin’s case only surfaced days before his execution.

Iran’s judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency reported Madani’s execution with the headline: “Pedram Madani, spy of the Zionist regime, was hanged.”

The report claimed he had traveled to Berlin, Brussels, and Israel for training and was “seeking to recruit people and collect and transfer classified information.”

Mizan listed his charges as “espionage for the intelligence service of the Zionist regime” and “illegally obtaining property in the form of receiving foreign cash currency in Europe and digital currency.”

“After identification, arrest, and judicial proceedings against Pedram Madani, who was spying for the Zionist regime, and following the complete process of criminal procedure and the final confirmation of the verdict by the Supreme Court, he was brought to justice and executed,” the agency reported.

Human rights advocates say silencing families serves a broader purpose beyond suppressing dissent.

It conceals the frequency of death penalty use - especially in national security cases and prevents families from organizing, connecting, or supporting one another.

The psychological toll extends to the families, who are forced into silence and made to feel complicit in their loved one’s disappearance.

“This regime still has a thirst for bloodshed, and its victims are the most oppressed, quietest, and most invisible people,” Rasoulof wrote.

In recent years, Revolutionary Court judges have increasingly barred the participation of lawyers chosen by defendants, particularly human rights attorneys, in cases involving protesters or political prisoners sentenced to death on security charges.

Source: Iran Wire, Staff, May 30, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde