Death Penalty News

The judiciary identified Amir Hossein Ebrahimi and Amir Hossein Maleki as “the main perpetrators.” Both were executed on Tuesday morning. ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iran on Tuesday executed two men accused of killing four police officers in Isfahan province during the nationwide January protests, the judiciary reported.  The suspects protested in a group, who were family members and acquaintances, and were allegedly armed with knives, machetes, and Molotov cocktails, according to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency.  

Editor's note: This story was translated from the original VOA Persian article. A U.S.-based rights organization says that Iran's Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence against a fruit seller convicted in connection with anti-government protests earlier this year. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the media arm of the Human Rights Activists in Iran, reported Monday that the court reached the decision in the case against Arman Marefati. The group also said that two female protesters arrested in connection with the protests have been sentenced to a combined 44 years in prison.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 3 October 2026: State media reported the execution of Siavash Jamshidi-Kheirabadi, a protester arrested in connection with the protests in Shahrekord on 8 January. The exact location of the execution has not been specified. Siavash Jamshidi-Kheirabadi is the 32nd individual to be executed in connection with the January nationwide protests since 19 March, representing an average rate of one protester execution per week.

Iran executed two more in relation to the nationwide January protests over the country’s battered economy, the judiciary said Wednesday, accusing them of involvement in killing four security personnel in the northeastern Mashhad city.  The judiciary’s Mizan Online News Agency accused Ali Himati and Majid Nikandish of being “leaders of the unrest in Tabarsi, Mashhad,” where rioters allegedly carried weapons and incendiaries causing damage to public property. 

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 17 September 2026: In a new report on the deadly crackdown on the January 2026 protests, IHRNGO has published a list of more than 4,200 people killed.  The list is the result of months of collecting information, cross-checking sources and verifying victims’ identities, providing an extensive body of documentation on the killing of protesters in Iran. Among those identified are at least 420 women and 281 children under the age of 18.  Twenty-five of the children were under 14, and the youngest victim documented was just four and a half months old.

In the aftermath of the 12-Day War between Iran and Israel, followed by the concurrent military conflict involving the United States, Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iran’s penal statutes have undergone severe tightening. New criminal offenses have been added to statutory regulations, broadening the scope of criminally prosecutable acts and introducing significantly harsher penalties for existing security offenses. The majority of execution sentences handed down during this timeframe have not been made available to the public, nor have the executions been officially announced. However, based on official statements by judicial authorities, a substantial portion of recent executions was carried out under legislation passed following the 12-Day War.

September 3, 2026: A widening crackdown on Christians in Iran has reportedly resulted in the deaths of at least 33 Christian ministers and the detention of more than 130 others in recent months, according to Iran Alive Ministries, a Texas-based organisation supporting underground house churches in the country. Hormoz Shariat, founder of Iran Alive Ministries, told Baptist Press that at least 33 Christian ministers associated with the ministry had been killed amid intensified government pressure on Christians linked to the underground church movement.

According to rights groups' claims, more than 500 people have been killed by the regime since the protests erupted in January. Ten individuals accused of participating in the January protests have been sentenced to death, while another six received prison sentences of up to 25 years, according to Iranian media reports on Sunday. The sentences were handed down by Judges Morteza Barati and Mohammadreza Tavakoli of Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court, according to the Iran Human Rights Society, an independent advocacy group and information network.

While the Iranian regime organizes pharaonic funeral ceremonies for Ayatollah Khamenei, the reality on the ground tells a very different story: a nation brought to its knees, crushed by a collapsing economy and relentless repression. A Mourning Imposed as Propaganda The celebrations taking place across Iran for days—from Tehran to Qom and as far as Najaf and Karbala—represent a cruel paradox. In one of the darkest chapters of Iranian history, marked by galloping inflation, widespread poverty, and the still-open wounds of the recent conflict—which left behind damaged cities, an unstable power grid, paralyzed trade routes, broken supply chains, and a productive system strangled by the effects of war—the regime has chosen to allocate colossal budgets for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28th. As Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi has pointed out, the question haunting the people is not where the former Supreme Leader will be laid to rest but the exorb...

Iran has turned executions and opaque security trials into one of its harshest tools for suppressing dissent and maintaining control. The Iranian regime has used its conflict with Israel and the United States, regional tensions, and recurring political crises as tools to intensify repression at home. The sharp rise in executions in recent years stands out as the starkest expression of this policy. Reports published by international human rights organizations show that Iran remains one of the world’s leading executioners.

For Iran’s Kurdish population, the death penalty is not only a criminal-justice issue. It is part of a larger architecture of state control, political intimidation, and national-security repression that has followed the Kurdish question since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Kurdish activists, religious prisoners, protesters, and ordinary prisoners are pulled into a judicial system where the state often controls the accusation, the interrogation, the confession, the court narrative, and, finally, the rope.

The Islamic regime has used “wartime conditions” as a cover to intensify repression against the Iranian people, according to information reviewed by Amnesty International published earlier this week. In text messages reviewed by Amnesty, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was seen issuing direct warnings that those attempting to break through the regime’s internet restrictions could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, the punishment for which is often the death penalty. These threats were issued under the framing that ordinary online activity was a threat to national security.

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.

The line is crackly. But the voice of Mehrab Abdollahzadeh is clear and, given the circumstances, surprisingly steady. He's on death row in western Iran. He speaks quickly - as if time is running out. And his message is desperate. "You are hearing my voice from Oromiyeh Central Prison, and this may be the last time you hear it," he says in a voice note obtained by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 4 May 2026: State media reported that Ebrahim Dolatabadinejad, Mehdi Rasouli and Mohammadreza Miri, three protesters arrested in connection with the 8 and 9 January protests in Mashhad, were executed at an undisclosed location. Since 18 March, at least 24 political prisoners and four people accused of espionage, have been executed. 13 of the executed political prisoners were protesters, 12 of whom were arrested in connection with the January protests, and one in relation with the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) reported on Thursday that at least 44 protesters including two women and three teenagers who were reportedly under the age of 18 at the time of arrest, have been sentenced to death in relation to the January 2026 protests. Hundreds more remain at risk of death penalty charges and sentences.  In a meeting with judicial authorities this morning, Iran’s Head of Judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Eje’i urged the swift implementation of death sentences and executions. Nine protesters have been executed in relation to the protests thus far, all of them since 19 March.

Prior to Wednesday’s execution some 16 political prisoners were executed in a month, including eight from the PMOI. An Iranian opposition leader criticised European countries on Wednesday for doing too little to halt executions in Iran, after Tehran carried out another execution in what opponents say is a wartime crackdown on dissent. The judiciary’s news outlet Mizan reported on Wednesday that a man convicted of spying for Israel’s intelligence service and passing sensitive information had been executed.

The Iranian authorities have sentenced to death four more people, including a woman, over protests in January, several rights groups said on April 14. Iran has already hanged seven people in connection with the protests, which activists say were quelled in a crackdown that left thousands dead and tens of thousands arrested. Rights groups accuse the Islamic republic of using the death penalty as a tool of repression to instil fear in society, and fear it will ramp up capital punishment in the wake of the war against Israel and the United States.

Iranian authorities executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, the highest number since 1989, two NGOs say, warning it may use capital punishment even more extensively after protests in January and the war against Israel and the US. The number of executions represented an increase of 68 percent on the 975 people Iran put to death in 2024, and also included 48 women who were hanged, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) say in their joint annual report.

A documented report on executions, arrests, torture, denial of medical care, pressure on families, asset confiscation, and systematic restrictions on the right to defend In late February and March 2026, a set of field data, identified cases, recorded statistics, and official statements indicates that repression in Iran has continued simultaneously across multiple dimensions, including executions, widespread arrests, pressure on prisoners, restrictions on access to legal counsel, and judicial and economic measures against individuals. Severe restrictions on information and the lack of official disclosure regarding many cases have made it difficult to fully assess the scope of these developments.