Death Penalty News

Guards at Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj violently raided the political prisoners’ ward and executed two inmates, according to social media reports from a political prisoner. The Instagram page of Ahmadreza Haeri, a political prisoner, reported that prison guards and security forces stormed the political ward on Saturday and "completely ransacked" it. During the raid, two political prisoners, Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hosseini, were transferred to solitary confinement and executed on Sunday morning, according to the report.

Hassan Khalkhal Zard, a 32-year-old Iranian man who has languished behind bars for 11 weeks, is facing the death penalty for his online activities, IranWire has learned. Khalkhal Zard was arrested on October 1 by intelligence agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and is now being held in the quarantine ward of Gonbad-e Kavus prison in the northeastern city of Galikesh, according to a source close to him.

Ashkan Khatibi, a popular TV and cinema actor in Iran who was detained three months ago for expressing solidarity with protesters, has spoken up about his ordeal. In a post Saturday, Khatibi, 43, said that in the past three months he has been living in hiding and fear. “I was arrested and questioned for allegations made against me 90 days ago, charged and my case was handed over to a judge,” he wrote in Persian in his post which also included a message in English. Khatibi said his “endless” interrogations came with verbal and physical violence and that after being freed he was assaulted in the street by plainclothes security forces who accused him of blasphemy. The actor said he received so many death threats by phone that he had to change his cellphone number. “I had to leave behind my career, my life, and everything that I had worked hard for all my life.”

TEHRAN — Vahid Muharrami stumbled upon the plans for his own execution while working on the prison computer system. An inmate in northwestern Iran, he had been tapped by prison officials to help with computer work at the facility because of his technical expertise. That’s how, in August 2020, he came across the documents that meant he had two more days to live, at most. “When I saw the special paperwork in the system, I realized that I was only 24 hours or 48 hours max away from the gallows,” said Muharrami, 37, who was sentenced to death for his part in a 2014 brawl that killed a man. He had already watched as 130 other convicts in his prison, in the city of Ardebil, were sent to their deaths over the previous six and a half years. Muharrami asked for permission to call his mother to dictate his last will and testament over the phone — and to prepare her for seeing his broken, lifeless body in the prison yard, so that she wouldn’t pass out as many other mothers of executed men had. Bu...

US Republican politicians shared a video of a man hanging from a fixed line below a helicopter in Afghanistan, claiming it shows the Taliban executing him. This is false; footage shows he was affixed by a body harness, not a ligature around his neck, and journalists say he is a Taliban member who was attempting to attach the group's flag to a pole. "This horrifying image encapsulates Joe Biden's Afghanistan catastrophe: The Taliban hanging a man from an American Blackhawk helicopter," Senator Ted Cruz wrote on Twitter on August 30, 2021 above a tweet featuring a 12-second video of the scene. Representative Dan Crenshaw also spread the video on Twitter, while conservative pastor Greg Locke made the claim without including the footage. Many Facebook and Instagram users also posted stills from the clip. While the video is authentic, it is being misrepresented. Despite the low quality of the clip that is circulating online, it is possible to see that the man is hangi...

Over May 2021, Iranian authorities continued executions, torture, the suppression of minority groups, arrest and conviction of civil and political activists and the internet censorship. Group arrests at private parties, summonses, interrogations, and detentions of religious and ethnic minorities also continued. The following report is a summary of the human rights situation in Iran over the past month. This report will provide statistics and facts, including the execution of at least 19 citizens. Executions were mostly carried out in secret, with 13 executed on drug charges. The authorities issued flogging sentences this month. Widespread arrests on social or politically motivated charges also continued. In May 2021 Monthly Report, we look at those in more detail. Executions – Monthly Report May 2021 At least 21 people were executed in Iran in May; 15 for drug-related offenses and two for rape charges, which are not capital crimes under international law. 4 people were executed on drug...

Iran Human Rights (IHR); May 16, 2021: Behzad Adl, who was sentenced to death for “adultery by force and reluctance”, has been executed in Shiraz Central Prison. He was executed less than 11 months after his arrest despite stating that he had been tortured to extract forced confessions and denying all charges in court. According to Iran Human Rights, a 25 year old man was executed in Shiraz Central Prison on May 15. His identity has been established as Behzad Adl, who was handed three death sentences on charges of “adultery by force reluctance.” Behzad Adl was arrested on 21 June 2020. Speaking to IHR, an informed source said: “Behzad Adl’s confession was extracted under torture by electrically shocking him several times and beating him up, he had denied all the charges in court.” He was sentenced to three years imprisonment and two years in exile on the charge of “making obscene videos” on Instagram, five years imprisonment and seven years of “social deprivation” on the charge of “kid...

Multiple social media posts have shared a claim that death row inmates in Indonesia are individually responsible for paying around 200 million rupiah ($13,700) to cover the expenses of their own executions.  This claim is false: the expenses are covered by the Indonesian government. This Instagram post , dated April 11, 2021, shares a black-and-white photo of a man shot by a firing squad with an Indonesian-language text superimposed on the image. The post has attracted more than 24,000 likes.  Translated to English, the text on the photo reads: “How old were you when you knew death penalty is not free? Even in Indonesia, convicts themselves have to pay around 200 million for their own executions.” The post’s lengthy caption purports to quote an official from the Indonesian Attorney General’s Office, saying that the state spends around 200 million rupiah ($13,700) per execution. It also includes a list purportedly detailing the costs, such as coordination meetings, security fee...

A campaign on a rare scale uniting activists and personalities inside Iran and out is pressing Tehran not to execute men detained over anti-government protests , but faces an uphill struggle. In the face of a furious outcry, symbolised by the viral hashtag #Don't_Execute (#Edam_Nakon in Persian), Iran's judiciary last month halted the executions of three young men arrested over demonstrations in November 2019. Though some believe the social media movement influenced the judiciary's reprieve for the three -- all in their 20s -- Iran nevertheless went ahead with the hanging this month of a man arrested in Isfahan province over protests in the winter of 2017-2018. At a time of growing economic hardship due to the maximum-pressure policy of the US administration, Iran's leaders were rocked by last November's rallies. Fresh demonstrations followed in January after Tehran admitted the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner. Both times, protest...

Iranians took to social media to protest the planned execution of three young protesters, under the hashtag #اعدام_نکنید (#Don'tExecute). The men had taken part in last year's mass demonstrations against a fuel price hike. Iranian netizens took to Twitter and other social media platforms to protest and express their opposition to the death penalty handed to three young Iranian men for taking part in anti-government demonstrations last year. Opponents of the verdict tweeted the hashtag #Don'tExecute in Farsi, and #StopExecutionsInIran in English, with well-known figures including Oscar-winning filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, journalist Masih Alinejad, and the exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, joining the calls to stop the planned executions.  RELATED | Against Executions: Iranians Set Hashtag Trending on Twitter "It is the fire under the ashes that will one day conquer the streets of Iran again,” Alinejad wrote on Twitter. "Do not make people even more b...

Only three weeks after the harrowing murder of Romina Ashrafi ,13, who was beheaded in her sleep by her own father, two young women are murdered by their family members. The tragic deaths of Fatemeh Barihi, 19 and Reyhaneh Ameri, 22, who were murdered by their husband and father respectively, reinitiated the bitter debate over the savage honor killings in Iran sanctioned and institutionalized by the laws of the clerical regime. Reyhaneh Ameri, 22, was killed on June 15 by her father with an ax for coming home late. Reyhaneh had returned home at around 11:30 pm the night before and had a quarrel with her father. Her sister went to her parents’ home on Monday at around 8:30 or 9 am. When she entered there was no one home and Reyhaneh’s room was locked. She knocked constantly and no one answered. She noticed the rugs were in disarray. A few minutes later her father came home. Noticing her daughter the father was caught off guard, said he doesn’t know where the other...