Iran | Rights group warns Iranian ex-MMA champion faces imminent execution

An Iranian political prisoner sentenced to death on charges of “espionage and collaboration with a hostile state (Israel)” is at imminent risk of execution after being transferred to solitary confinement, the Norway-based rights group Hengaw said on Wednesday.

Gholamreza Khani Shakarab, 34, a former MMA champion, coach and international referee, was moved from a high-security ward in Tehran’s Evin Prison to solitary confinement in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, Hengaw said.

The case comes amid a widening wartime crackdown in Iran, where authorities have intensified arrests, executions and threats against dissent while repeatedly warning that criticism could aid the country’s enemies.

Rights groups and reformist commentators have increasingly warned that wartime conditions are being used to justify broader repression, tighter internet restrictions and harsher treatment of political prisoners at a time of heightened confrontation with the United States and Israel.

Hengaw said Judge Abolqasem Salavati of Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced Khani Shakarab to death in what it described as a highly opaque judicial process.

The sentence was upheld by Branch 39 of Iran’s Supreme Court and referred for implementation despite a recent request for judicial review submitted by his relatives, the rights group said.

A source familiar with the case told Hengaw that Khani Shakarab was denied access to a lawyer of his choosing during interrogation and trial and that the conviction was based solely on forced confessions extracted under pressure.

Hengaw said Khani Shakarab had been living in Turkey before his arrest and was detained last year by Iran’s security forces during a trip to Iraq for a religious pilgrimage at the request of a relative, before subsequently being transferred to Iran.

His brother, Esmail Khani, 43, was also arrested in the same case on political charges and is serving a prison sentence in Ardabil Central Prison, Hengaw added.

The case comes as Amnesty International said this week that executions worldwide rose to their highest recorded level in more than four decades in 2025, with Iran responsible for the overwhelming majority of the increase.

According to Amnesty’s annual report, Iranian authorities carried out at least 2,159 executions last year — more than double the previous year’s figure and by far the largest contributor to the global rise.

“A shameless minority are weaponizing the death penalty to instill fear, crush dissent and punish marginalized communities,” Amnesty Secretary General Agnès Callamard said in the report.

Source: iranintl.com, Staff, May 20, 2026

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

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