Two weeks after Ali Rahbar was arrested in anti-regime protests in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, his cousin heard from relatives that he had been executed. He was 33.
“I was shocked,” his cousin, who lives in Europe, told The Sunday Times. “Everything went dark before my eyes.”
Rahbar’s family had no idea where he had been held or what the charge was, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions against his family in Iran.
“He didn’t even have time to get a lawyer,” the cousin added. “It makes no sense by any standard.” Two human rights organisations said they were working to verify details about what has happened to Rahbar.
The Sunday Times has not been able to independently verify the claims or contact Rahbar’s family inside Iran, over concerns they are being monitored by the authorities. The Washington-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said it had no confirmations of executions related to the protests at this stage. Rahbar’s cousin said the family were not given further details, including the method of execution. Asked if it was possible that Rahbar died as a result of torture, his cousin said: “These criminals are capable of anything.”
More than 3 weeks after Iran’s authorities began to brutally crush nationwide protests, with some estimates putting the death toll at 30,000 or more, fears have been growing over the fate of those taken alive.
Iran’s Islamic regime has not officially announced the number of protesters detained but a member of the country’s parliament disclosed to The Sunday Times that the nationwide estimate “cited … during a closed-door parliamentary session” has “surpassed 50,000”.
That figure roughly matches the 49,545 tallied by HRANA as of Saturday.
Fast-tracked executions
Detainees in Iran are often held incommunicado in severely overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, without access to medical care or legal counsel, and subjected to torture, several lawyers and activists said.
There is also a risk of fast-tracked executions. The Sunday Times has been told of at least 6 detained protesters facing charges that carry the death penalty, as well as 2 others who have already been sentenced to death. The father of one such detainee, a 29-year-old man from Tehran, said in an interview that he first heard from his son 6 days after his arrest in January.
“He made a single phone call that lasted just 43 seconds, during which he said his court session had been held online,” said the father, who requested anonymity. “He didn’t even tell us what his charges were.”
Nine days later, the detainee called again. This time, he said he had been charged with moharebeh, or waging war against God, his father said. “And a death sentence had been issued.”
During the protests, on January 9, Tehran’s prosecutor, Ali Salehi, said that protesters could face moharebeh charges for what he described as clashes with security forces, arson and destruction of public property.
Afterwards, they said, the judge accused their son of “terrorist acts” and informed them a death sentence would be issued. When the family later went to the prosecutor’s office, they were told the charge on file was “murder during a group altercation” — a charge he denied.
In both cases, the families said their sons were barred from retaining a lawyer.
President Trump has claimed that Iran pledged to halt the hangings of more than 800 detained protesters after his threats to strike the country — a statement that Salehi has dismissed as “nonsense”. The prosecutor also said that the judicial response to protesters — who have been referred to by regime authorities as terrorists, rioters and armed mercenaries — would be “decisive, deterrent and swift”.
A prominent human rights lawyer in Tehran told The Sunday Times he had spoken to the families of at least six detained protesters who had been accused of serious crimes, including “waging war against God and killing an officer”, charges that can carry the death penalty.
“In one case, they sat the detainee down in front of the head of the judiciary for a televised ‘confession’,” said the lawyer, who asked not to be named.
Families of protesters have no way of learning where their children are being held, what they are charged with and what “evidence” the regime claims to have against them, he said, adding that he and his colleagues had been blocked from representing the protesters because only “lawyers vetted and aligned with the system” are permitted.
Some families, the lawyer said, hope Trump will intervene and that international pressure will stop the executions.
One protester, Erfan Soltani, 26, was arrested on January 8 and sentenced to death. After an international outcry, Iran’s judiciary denied he had been sentenced to death, and said he could face a prison term instead.
Trump has continued to threaten strikes on Iran, moving what he described as an “armada” of military equipment to within range of the country in recent days. On Friday, Trump said he had told Iran to do “two things” to avoid military action: “Number one, no nuclear. And number 2, stop killing protesters,” adding: “We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to Iran right now, and it would be great if we didn’t have to use them.”
“To be blunt, Iran’s future depends on Trump,” the lawyer said. “If he does nothing, we will enter darkness and winter.”
In a prison in the central Iranian city of Yazd, officials are forcing detained protesters to sign blank sheets of paper that could be filled in by their captors as “confessions” of serious crimes, a prisoner who has been incarcerated there since before the recent protests told The Sunday Times, speaking on condition of anonymity.
New detainees continue to arrive, including those identified through security camera footage or social media, the prisoner said, adding: “Two of the protesters are injured: one was shot in the thigh with a Kalashnikov round, and another suffered shrapnel wounds to the face.”
The detainees are being held in “two overcrowded quarantine rooms in extremely poor conditions”, so unhygienic that many now have lice, the prisoner added. “Everyone is upset and crying all the time — even some prison officials. Everyone I speak to says, ‘Why are we alive? Why didn’t they kill us, too?’”
Many protesters in Kerman province in southeastern Iran are detained in “unofficial locations” such as “warehouses and container structures”, according to Bahar Ghandehari, director of the New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran.
Conditions there “are extremely poor and inhumane”, she said, putting detainees “at extreme risk of abduction, enforced disappearance, torture and death in custody”. Every day, she said, families desperately sought information about their loved ones but many detainees’ names appear neither on lists of prisoners nor among the dead.
Ali Rahbar was buried at a cemetery in Mashhad, his cousin said. He said he was “one of the purest-hearted” people he knew — someone who spent his days training at the gym — and became engaged last summer. “He always cared about freedom,” the cousin said. “He used to say, ‘I want to live, and I have so many dreams’.”
Source: thetimes.com, Staff, January 31, 2026
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
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