Iran court sentences January protest detainee to death, rights group says

An Iranian court has handed down a death sentence to a man detained in connection with the January 2026 protests in the northeastern city of Shandiz, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported on Sunday.

Hossein Rasouli-Nasab was sentenced by the Mashhad Revolutionary Court on charges including “moharebeh,” or waging war against God, HRANA said.

The rights group said authorities had alleged that he committed moharebeh through participation in the destruction of public property and setting fire to religious centers. He was also accused of assembly and collusion against national security.

A source close to his family told HRANA that a mosque and a Quranic center caught fire during protests in Shandiz on January 8 and 9, and that Rasouli-Nasab’s case was opened in connection with those events.

Rasouli-Nasab was arrested during the January protests along with several other people, HRANA said. He was later transferred to Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad, where he remains held.

His case comes amid mounting concern from rights groups over the use of the death penalty against people detained in connection with the nationwide protests.

Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center said in a joint report published on September 10 that Iranian authorities announced the executions of 29 people arrested in connection with the December 2025-January 2026 protests between March 18 and the end of August. Several were 18 or 19 years old, and five were executed in public.

Proceedings are often extremely fast, in some protest-related cases taking just over five weeks from arrest to execution.

The groups said that in 16 of those cases authorities did not allege that the defendants had killed anyone. Instead, some were executed over allegations including blocking streets, damaging public property, and other acts that rights groups said did not meet the threshold for capital punishment under international law.

Human Rights Watch said the proceedings were often extremely fast, in some protest-related cases taking just over five weeks from arrest to execution, and said convictions were based in some cases on torture-tainted confessions and vague national security charges.

Amnesty International has separately accused Iranian authorities of “weaponizing the death penalty to repress dissent.”

Last week, Iran International reported that 18 prisoners held at Dastgerd prison in the central Iranian city of Isfahan were facing possible death sentences over unrest and a fire at the facility.

Last month, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said executions and death sentences in Iran had risen since March, with more than 100 other people facing similar charges and the death penalty.

Source: Iran International, Staff, September 13, 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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