Death Penalty News

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 19 January 2026: Twenty-three days since the start of the nationwide protests in Iran and twelve days after the internet blackout, information and eyewitness accounts are revealing the scale of the large-scale killing of protesters by state forces. Given the magnitude of these crimes and the severe restrictions on communications, it is not currently possible to publish precise casualty figures in line with the IHRNGO’s standards, which require multi-layered verification and confirmation by at least two independent sources. For this reason, the organisation will refrain from issuing daily statistics until sufficient documentation has been obtained.

JANUARY 19, 2026 05:59 — Iran’s supreme leader has now openly acknowledged what the Islamic Republic has spent weeks trying to obscure from the world. In remarks carried by Iranian state media on Saturday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei admitted that “several thousand deaths” had occurred during Iran’s latest wave of nationwide protests, while blaming the United States and Israel for the bloodshed. Protesters, he declared, were “criminals,” “mercenaries,” and mohareb (enemies of God) – a charge that carries the death penalty under Iranian law.

Recent statements by Iranian officials and their apparent acceptance by some foreign leaders have created a misleading sense of reassurance about the state’s response to the latest protests.  Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Fox News on Wednesday that Tehran had “no plan to execute protesters.” President Donald Trump told reporters he had it “on good authority” that the killing of protesters had stopped.  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday that Tehran had halted 800 executions slated for the previous day following warnings by Trump. 

DUBAI/WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he had been told that killings in Iran’s crackdown on protests were easing and that he believed there was no current plan for large-scale executions, adopting a wait‑and‑see posture after earlier threatening intervention. After Iran's foreign minister said Iran had "no plan" to hang people, Iranian state media on Thursday reported that a 26-year-old man arrested during protests in the city of Karaj would not be given the death sentence. Earlier this week, rights organisation Hengaw reported that 26-year-old Erfan Soltani , arrested in connection with protests in the city of Karaj, was due to be executed on Wednesday.

Iran's Supreme Leader threatened to put 'rioters in their place' after violent protests left at least 10 people dead.  The Middle Eastern nation has seen a sharp rise in arrests following days of unrest sparked by soaring inflation.  Speaking in a recorded appearance on Saturday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic 'we will speak with the protesters but talking to rioters is useless. 'Rioters should be put in their place,' he added. 

A senior Iranian cleric said on Tuesday that threatening Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei should carry a death sentence, days after a young man died in Western Iran after filming himself burning the 86-year-old theocrat's photo. "Any threat against the supreme leader is waging war on God, which carries a death sentence," Ahmad Khatami, a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, said in a speech in Tehran. Omid Sarlak was found dead in a car in western Iran on Saturday, shortly after posting a video of himself burning a photo of Khamenei. Police called it a suicide, but his family said he was killed by the state.

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.

More than 400 senior clerics in Iran’s holy city of Qom have backed a religious decree labeling threats against Supreme Leader as “moharebeh” or “waging war against God,” a crime in Islamic law that can carry the death penalty. The members of the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom, many of whom are senior religious scholars in Iran’s influential Shi’ite seminaries, said they were endorsing a fatwa which declared those who threaten religious authority figures – including the Supreme Leader – fall into the category of mohareb and must face the corresponding religious and legal consequences.is

In Iranian-Kurdish prisoner jailed in connection with the country’s 2022 nationwide protests has been sentenced to death on several charges including plotting to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his daughter told Iran International. Rezgar Beigzadeh Babamiri, a 47-year-old farmer and father of three from the Kurdish city of Bukan, was arrested in April 2023 in connection with the nationwide Woman Life Freedom protests sparked by the death in custody of 22-year old Mahsa Zhina Amini. He was detained after providing aid and medical supplies to to the wounded protesters in the northwestern Iranian city of Bukan. However, his daughter now reveals a new charge leveled against him.

Execution of 30 prisoners, including three women, on October 1 and 2, 2024, and 255 executions since Pezeshkian [President of Iran] took office Mrs. Maryam Rajavi: On the eve of the World Day Against the Death Penalty, I call on the international community to support the campaign against executions and to make relations with the Iranian regime conditional on stopping torture and executions. The regime’s leaders must face justice for crimes against humanity and genocide.