Iran executed at least 1,000 this year in prison 'mass killing'

Paris (AFP) – Iran has executed at least 1,000 people so far in 2025, an NGO said on Tuesday, denouncing a "mass killing campaign" in prisons aimed at spreading fear through society.

At least 64 people were hanged in the past week alone, an average of more than nine per day, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group, which counts and verifies executions in Iran on a daily basis.

With more than three months of 2025 still to go, the figure is already the highest since IHR began keeping records in 2008, topping the 975 executions recorded last year.

Iran carried out a wave of executions in the 1980s and early 1990s in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war.

But activists say the Islamic republic is now using capital punishment more intensely than at any time in the past three decades, with the clerical leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei challenged by 2022-2023 protests and the 12-day war against Israel in June.

"In recent months the Islamic republic has begun a mass killing campaign in Iran's prisons, the dimensions of which -- in the absence of serious international reactions -- are expanding every day," IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said in a statement.

The executions amount to crimes against humanity and must be placed at the top of the international community's agenda.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is set to potentially cross paths with Western leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

Iran's nuclear programme is likely to dominate the agenda after the UN Security Council voted to reimpose sanctions.

But Amiry-Moghaddam said the executions "amount to crimes against humanity and must be placed at the top of the international community's agenda".

"Any dialogue between countries committed to the foundations of human rights and the Islamic republic that does not include the execution crisis in Iran is unacceptable."

'Intimidate and create fear'

The group said the UN should investigate executions as crimes against humanity given they were used with the political aim "to intimidate and create societal fear".

Iran has executed ten people this year in charges of spying for Israel, according to IHR, the majority after the conflict with Israel began.

The latest to be hanged on such charges was Babak Shahbazi, who was executed on September 17 after what Amnesty International described as a "grossly unfair trial in which the authorities never investigated his torture."

IHR said its figures for executions are "an absolute minimum", with the real number likely higher "due to the lack of transparency and restrictions on reporting".

Executions in Iran are currently carried out exclusively by hanging, although other methods have been used in past.

Most executions take place in prison, although there are occasional public hangings.

The UN rights office said last month there had been a significant increase in the use of capital punishment in Iran, indicating "a systematic pattern of using death penalty as a tool of state intimidation".

At the time Iran defended its use of the death penalty, saying it applied only to the most serious offences with foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei saying Tehran was "striving to limit the use of this punishment to only the most severe crimes".

But IHR said most hangings were for non-lethal offences, with 50 percent of executions for drugs-related cases.

Out its toll for 2025, 28 of those hanged were women, many of whom according to activists were convicted after killing a husband they had been forced to marry or who was violent.

According to human rights groups including Amnesty, Iran is the world's second most prolific executioner after China, which is believed to execute thousands each year although no precise figures are available.

Amnesty said this week that executions in Iran had reached "horrific proportions" and "scores of people" were at risk of execution in Iran after "unfair trials and convictions on politically motivated charges".

Source: Agence France-Presse, Staff, September 23, 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

Tibetan protesters executed for Lhasa riot killings

Tibetan exiles have reported the first executions of those convicted for rioting last year in Lhasa, with at least two people put to death in a rare implementation of capital punishment in the restive region. Two Tibetans convicted of arson and sentenced to death in April were executed on Tuesday morning in Lhasa, reported The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, which is based in the Indian town of Dharamsala—the home in exile of the Dalai Lama. It said that Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak had been sentenced to death for their part in setting fire to five shops in the Tibetan capital, killing seven people, in the riot that rocked Lhasa in March last year. Officials say that 21 people — including three Tibetan protesters — died in the violence, which embarrassed Beijing just as it was preparing to stage the Olympic Games and prompted a security crackdown across the Himalayan region. The body of Mr. Gyaltsen had been returned to his family and then submitted to a river burial—an un...

Iran: Delara Darabi has now been scheduled for execution

Delara Darabi has now been scheduled for execution, according to the Iranian newspaper Etemad on 18 April, according to another source on 20 April. She was convicted of murdering a relative when she was 17. Unless the Judiciary intervenes, she can now escape execution only if the woman’s entire family accept payment of diyeh, or blood money. One of the familly is said to be undecided. Iran is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibit the use of the death penalty against people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: - expressing concern that Delara Darabi is in imminent danger of execution for a crime committed when she was under 18; - calling on the authorities to halt the execution of Delara Darabi immediately, and commute her death sentence; - reminding the authorities that Iran is a state part...

Florida | Former prison warden who oversaw executions urges corrections workers to not participate in them

Recently Florida carried out the execution of Dusty Spencer , a 74-year-old Marine veteran, for the murder of his wife, Karen, in 1992. It was the ninth Florida execution this year. For their own sake, I urge Florida’s corrections workers to refuse to carry out another one. Before you dismiss me as some soft lefty, you should know that I am an Air Force veteran. I voted for Ron DeSantis for governor twice—and for Donald Trump for president three times.

Iran: Prisoner of conscience Mohsen Amir Aslani hanged for ‘different interpretation of Quran’

Mohsen Amir Aslani NCRI - The Iranian Resistance calls on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council, as well as all international human rights organizations to strongly condemn the execution of prisoner of conscience Mr Mohsen Amir Aslani on charges of “corruption on earth; changing Islam’s principles and secondary laws; and new interpretation of Quran”. It further calls for adoption of binding decisions against the growing number of arbitrary executions by the religious fascism ruling Iran. Mr. Amir Aslani, 37, who had been in prison since eight years ago, was once sentenced to four years in prison which was later commuted to twenty-eight months. However, as more fabricated charges were brought against him, the head henchman Judge Salavati condemned him to death. The Iranian regime has refraining from handing over the body of this prisoner to his family through stonewalling and offering contradictory answers to them. The execution...

Iraq: Saddam Hussein Execution was Moved Forward Because of Gaddafi Rescue Plans, Judge Says

Saddam Hussein's execution on December 30, 2006 The execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was accelerated due to the belief that the then Libyan leader, Muammar El-Gaddafi, had a plan to rescue him from prison, Judge Mounir Haddad revealed today. Hadad, who presided over the trial of Hussein, revealed to the Al-Arabiya Satellite Channel Point of Order program new details of the trial against the former president and his last moments before being hanged, including the 'health and welfare' votes for the magistrate himself . According to his testimony, the application of the death penalty to Saddam Hussein was precipitated because authorities knew that El-Gaddafi - later murdered in 2011 - was allegedly trying to bribe US guards who guarded him to rescue him from prison. He added that, contrary to previous reports from the local and US press, former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani gave his 'implicit approval' for Hussein's execution, an...

Tennessee Reduced Training in IV Placement in New Lethal Injection Protocol

The protocol that took effect in 2025 sheds new light on Tony Carruthers’ botched execution, when Dr. Mark Fowler spent nearly an hour trying, and failing, to place a secondary IV line Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol adopted a year and a half ago appears to include reduced training in IV placement. That’s the part of the process prison staff failed to complete last month before aborting the execution of Tony Carruthers. Filings from ongoing litigation over the protocol show concerns about the executioners’ training and qualifications aren’t new.

Halfway through the year, Saudi Arabia has already executed nearly 100 people

Almost 100 people executed so far this year as dozens more remain on death row for drug-related offences Saudi Arabian authorities have executed nearly 100 people so far this year, including at least 61 for drug-related offences, the latest of which was on 18 June. In response, Dana Ahmed, Middle East Researcher at Amnesty International, said today: “It is halfway through the year and Saudi Arabia has executed nearly 100 people, a grim milestone exposing the authorities’ unconscionable and unlawful use of the death penalty. Of the 96 people put to death already in 2026, an astounding 61 were executed for drug-related offences; 39 of them were foreign nationals and 22 Saudi nationals.

U.S. | Lethal injections are more likely to be botched, experts say

Tony Carruthers, a Memphis man on death row, is one of hundreds of people in the U.S. whose executions did not go as planned When the Tennessee Department of Corrections botched Tony Carruthers’ execution, it wasn’t surprising to Austin Sarat. He’s been researching and writing about “state killings” for decades. “Of all of the methods of execution used in the United States over the last 140 years, lethal injection has the highest rate of being botched,” said Sarat, a professor of law and politics at Amherst College. He said an execution is botched when it deviates from standard operating procedure or official legal protocol.

Florida executes Dusty Ray Spencer

74-year-old man becomes oldest inmate executed in modern Florida history A 74-year-old man convicted of fatally stabbing his wife became the oldest person executed in Florida’s modern history on Thursday, and the state is scheduled to execute another 74-year-old inmate next month. Dusty Ray Spencer was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Spencer was convicted of the 1992 stabbing death of his wife Karen.

As Idaho Reinstates Firing Squad, Volunteers Sought for Executions

The state becomes the first in the U.S. to make the firing squad the standard method of capital punishment Idaho is opening a new phase in the administration of capital punishment in the United States, returning to the firing squad as the default method of execution. The decision reintroduces a system that has been abolished or abandoned in most of the country and is now being reorganized through a formal and highly structured framework. The new death penalty protocol State authorities have begun recruiting volunteer law enforcement officers to take part in executions. The operational model includes three primary shooters assigned to carry out the execution, two alternates, and one operations coordinator. All participants will remain anonymous, known only to the prison warden and deputy warden.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog