Iran | Executions in Mashhad, Kermanshah, Isfahan, Khorramabad

The death sentence of Samad Mousavi, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of a forest ranger, has been carried out at Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad.

According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Mousavi was arrested in connection with the killing of a forest ranger and was subsequently sentenced to death (qisas) by the Iranian Judiciary on charges of “premeditated murder.” The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court before being carried out at Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad.

The execution was confirmed by official media outlets in Iran. In a report published on Monday, June 8, the state-affiliated Khorasan newspaper announced that Mousavi had been executed at Mashhad’s Vakilabad Prison, although it did not disclose the exact date on which the sentence was carried out.

Executions in Kermanshah

Iranian authorities have executed at least two prisoners, including a Kurdish man identified as Abbas Zarei in Kermanshah Central Prison (Dizel Abad Prison) and an Arab prisoner identified as Ebrahim Modatzadeh in Mahshahr Central Prison. Both had previously been sentenced to death on charges of premeditated murder.

According to information obtained by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Abbas Zarei was executed at dawn on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in Dizel Abad Prison in Kermanshah.

Zarei was married and a resident of the village of Sarin in the Firouzabad district of Kermanshah County (Kermashan). He had previously been arrested on charges of premeditated murder and was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) by the Iranian judiciary.

In a separate case, Ebrahim Modatzadeh, an Arab prisoner, was executed at dawn on Monday, June 8, 2026, in Mahshahr Central Prison in Khuzestan Province. He had also been convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to death under qisas provisions.

The executions of Abbas Zarei and Ebrahim Modatzadeh have not been announced by Iranian state media or official sources affiliated with the judiciary.

Executions in Isfahan and Mashhad

Iranian authorities have executed three prisoners, including two Baloch men, in the central prisons of Isfahan and Mashhad. The prisoners, Rashid Qanbarzehi, Asadollah Bahreh, and Azad Shoushtari, had been sentenced to death on charges related to “drug offenses” and “premeditated murder.”

According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Rashid Qanbarzehi, a Baloch prisoner, was executed in the early hours of Tuesday, June 9, 2026, at Isfahan Central Prison (Dastgerd Prison).

Qanbarzehi, a married father of six, was from the village of Chah Zard in the Nosratabad district of Zahedan County. He was arrested in Isfahan in 2018 on charges related to “drug offenses” and was later sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court.

His father was executed in Yazd Prison in 2011, while his younger brother, Reza Qanbarzehi, was later executed on similar “drug-related” charges in Chabahar Prison.

Meanwhile, Asadollah Bahreh, a 35-year-old Baloch man from Salehabad in Torbat-e Jam County, was executed at Mashhad Central Prison (Vakilabad Prison). He was married and had one child. Bahreh had been arrested three years earlier on charges related to “drug offenses” and was later sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court in Mashhad.

Separately, Azad Shoushtari was executed on Thursday, June 4, 2026, at Mashhad Central Prison. He had been arrested about four years earlier on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with a street altercation and sentenced to qisas (retributive punishment in kind).

According to informed sources, Shoushtari’s family had managed to raise and pay 4 billion tomans of the demanded blood money (diya) to the victim’s family over the years. However, they were unable to secure the remaining 2 billion tomans of the total 6 billion tomans requested.

The victim’s family ultimately declined to grant a pardon, and the qisas sentence was carried out.

Iranian state media and official sources affiliated with the judiciary had not reported the executions at the time of publication.

Execution in Khorramabad

Iranian authorities have executed Nourmorad Fallahnejad, a Lor prisoner from Khorramabad, Lorestan Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on a murder charge.

According to information obtained by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the execution was carried out at dawn on Saturday, June 6, 2026, in Khorramabad Central Prison (Parsilon Prison).

Sources told Hengaw that Fallahnejad, 48, was a resident of Khorramabad and the father of three children. He had been arrested five years ago following a dispute over agricultural land that escalated into a confrontation in which a man was fatally shot with a hunting rifle.

He was subsequently convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to death by the Iranian judiciary.

Iranian state media and judiciary-affiliated outlets have not announced the execution of Nourmorad Fallahnejad.

Source: hengaw.net, Staff, June 9-11, 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

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

Comments

US | Army lays groundwork for death row executions if Trump gives approval

The Army is preparing to carry out the executions of the military's four death-row inmates if ordered to do so by the president, according to an internal planning document reviewed by ABC News. If carried out, it would mark the first time the military executed convicted American inmates in more than a half-century The plan, dubbed "Operation Resolute Justice" and issued internally in February, directs Army officials to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer condemned prisoners from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the Justice Department carried out a series of non-military federal executions during President Donald Trump's first term.

Texas | Tanner Horner now incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit

Convicted child killer Tanner Horner has now taken up residence in one of the most brutal death row prisons after being sentenced to die by a Texas jury last month. Horner is incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit, an infamously restrictive prison outside Houston where the state's death row inmates are housed in an all-solitary confinement wing and spend at least 22 hours a day in their 60-square-foot cells. The former FedEx deliveryman, 34, was booked at the notorious prison on May 5 within hours of being sentenced for the gruesome murder of Athena Strand, 7, whom he admitted strangling while delivering a Christmas gift to her home in November 2022.

Alabama | Judge bars nitrogen gas execution, says method is unconstitutionally cruel

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- A federal judge on Tuesday permanently blocked Alabama from executing an inmate with nitrogen gas after declaring it violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Emily Marks issued the ruling hours after an appeals court reversed her initial finding that the method was constitutional. Marks permanently enjoined the state from executing Jeffrey Lee, 49, by nitrogen gas. He was scheduled to be executed Thursday. The decision, for now, blocks the use of the controversial new execution method that the state has championed since 2024, but the issue will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alabama Plans to Execute Jeffrey Lee Despite Jury Vote for Life

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled the execution of Jeffrey Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, 2026, even though his capital jury voted 7-5 against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. Lee to death in 2000, relying on a unique Alabama practice that allowed judges to overrule jury verdicts in death penalty cases. Alabama is the only state where judges overrode jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty routinely—in more than 100 cases since 1976. As a result, nearly 20% of the people currently on Alabama’s death row were sentenced to death by elected judges even after their juries chose life imprisonment without parole.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Texas | Death Row Inmate Gets Resentenced to Life

Harris County district judge recommends compassionate release for Clarence Jordan A 1977 convenience store robbery that resulted in a clerk’s death landed Clarence Jordan on Texas Death Row, where he remained for decades even though he was declared incompetent for execution. On Monday, a judge recommended that the disabled man be released. Harris County District Court Judge Katherine Thomas resentenced Jordan to life with the possibility of parole and suggested that he be considered for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Medically Recommended Intensive Supervision program, also known as compassionate release.

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

Florida executes Andrew Richard Lukehart

Jacksonville man who killed his girlfriend’s 5-month-old baby in 1996 executed 30 years later A Jacksonville man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s 5-month-old daughter and throwing her body in a pond 3 decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening. Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was scheduled to receive a 3-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of aggravated child abuse and felony murder in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw. The baby’s mother told News4JAX she plans to attend the execution.

Alabama | Judicial Decision About Nitrogen Hypoxia Renders the Constitutional Prohibition of Cruel Punishment Meaningless

On June 11, the state of Alabama plans to execute Jeffrey Lee with nitrogen hypoxia . He will be the ninth person put to death by this method since its first use in 2024. Lee contends that nitrogen hypoxia will cause him great suffering. On May 28, Federal District Judge Emily Marks agreed with him but said his execution could proceed nonetheless. Hers is a remarkable and shockingly candid decision. It made history, coming after the first trial in the country on the constitutionality of nitrogen hypoxia. To her credit, Judge Marks offered an unusually detailed picture of the pain imposed by capital punishment.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog