Iran Intensifies Repression Under Pretext of War; Widespread Arrests and Enforced Disappearance of Political Prisoners

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); June 19, 2025: Since the start of Israel’s attack on Iran, according to state media, the Islamic Republic media has arrested at least 223 for charges related to collaboration with Israel. Internet access has also been severely restricted and two political prisoners, Ali Younesi and Hamid Kashani, were transferred from Evin Prison to an unknown location without notice. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic’s judiciary and parliament have called for harsher sentences in Israel-related cases and faster implementation of those punishments.

Referring to the Islamic Republic’s history of intensifying repression and executions in wartime, Iran Human Rights expresses grave concern and calls for the international community to pay attention to the situation of citizens inside Iran. The organisation also raises concern about the lack of a transparent judicial process that will investigate and prosecute Israel-related charges, which could result in the death penalty, and warned of an intensification of repression and executions in the coming days.

RELATED | Iran: Growing fears over torture and executions of individuals accused of ‘espionage’ for Israel

IHRNGO Director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “At a time when the world’s attention is focused on the military conflict between Israel and Iran, the international community and the people, especially Iranians abroad, must not allow another human rights disaster to unfold in prisons under the shadow of war."

The mass arrests began on 14 June 2025, a day after the ongoing Israeli attack on Iran. According to IHRNGO’s monitoring of Iran state media, a wide range of charges, such as “collaborating with Israel, taking photos of sensitive locations, disturbing public opinion, creating fear and panic, disturbing public mental peace, media support for Israel, disrupting the psychological security of society, communicating with Israeli agents, spying for Mossad,” and similar cases, have been cited as reasons for these arrests.

At least 223 people have been arrested, according to official media reports. The real figures are believed to be higher.

Those accused of ties to Israel should be very swiftly tried and punished according to wartime conditions.

— Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, head of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary

The arrests have been reported in many provinces across the country, including: Yazd, Hormozgan, Kerman, Isfahan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Golestan, Tehran, Alborz, Ardabil, Fars, Mazandaran, North Khorasan, Khorasan Razavi, Lorestan, Ilam, Bushehr, West Azerbaijan, Zanjan, Qazvin, Markazi, Kermanshah and Kurdistan.

A significant number of those arrested are Afghans living in Iran. On 4 June, IHRNGO and 83 other human rights organisations and groups issued a statement calling for action to stop the increasing number of Afghan executions in Iran. As the most costless victims of the death penalty in Iran, they expressed “fear that dozens more Afghan nationals will be executed in the coming months.”

At the same time as arrests on charges of ties to Israel intensified, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, said in a statement that those accused of ties to Israel should be “very swiftly tried and punished according to wartime conditions.”

RELATED | A New Wave of Arbitrary Arrests in Iran

The Islamic Consultative Assembly (Parliament) also approved two urgent bills to intensify punishments for those accused of collaborating with Israel.

If the proposed law is passed, "espionage or collaboration with hostile states, including the US government," will be considered efsad-fil-arz (corruption on earth) and thus be subject to the punishment set in Article 286 of the Islamic Penal Code, namely the death penalty.

Source: Iran Human Rights, Staff, June 19, 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

Comments

California | Becerra vows to extend moratorium despite past support for capital punishment

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

Iran | Afghan Citizen Executed in Wheelchair Due to Severe Mobility Disability

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

California | He spent 19 years on death row. His conversion to Judaism helped him endure

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin. Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

Egypt TV presenter and 11 others sentenced to death in major drugs case

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 others have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drug trafficking and rape, while nine defendants received life sentences and seven were acquitted. Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa, 39, has been sentenced to death by hanging along with 11 other defendants after being found guilty in a drugs case involving a criminal gang accused of importing ingredients used to manufacture narcotics for sale.

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Arizona AG seeks execution date for man convicted in 1995 trooper killing

Trooper Bob Martin was killed during a traffic stop on the Beeline highway; execution for his killer could be as soon as January PHOENIX (AZFamily)—The Arizona Attorney General is asking for an execution date to be set for a man convicted in the killing of an Arizona State Trooper over 30 years ago. On Aug. 15, 1995, Trooper Bob Martin was shot and killed while performing a traffic stop along the Beeline Highway.

Ex-corrections officials urge governor to commute Kansas death sentences

Former Kansas corrections officials are urging Governor Laura Kelly to grant clemency to the state's death row inmates. Former Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has several reasons why he thinks the state should abolish the death penalty. Werholtz, who served as secretary from 2002 to 2010 and returned on an interim basis in 2019, uses his discussions with peers and family members of victims as well as experiences of seeing wrongly convicted people getting exonerated as his guiding points.

Florida executes Harold Gene Lucas

Florida state officials executed 74-year-old Harold Gene Lucas by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, concluding a 50-year legal saga stemming from the 1976 murder of a 16-year-old girl in Bonita Springs. STARKE, Fla. -- A man convicted of killing a teenage girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends was put to death Tuesday in the first of three executions planned this month in Florida. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, authorities said. He was sentenced to death for the 1976 shooting attack on Jill Piper and the wounding of her friends, Richard Byrd Jr. and Terri Rice.

Inside and outside Oklahoma execution chamber, Tulsans stand on different sides of death penalty debate

Sheriff Vic Regalado and Father Bryan Brooks, pastor at the Church of Saint Benedict, are two men of influence in Tulsa County. They live different lives—one enveloped in faith, the other elected to lead a law enforcement agency of more than 600. Both were brought together by the death penalty. The men believe it is their duty to support families of victims but land on different sides of the aisle when it comes to executions. Regalado is in support of the death penalty, saying it is part of the criminal justice system and brings closure to the families of murder victims.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog