Death Penalty News

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.

Tremane Wood was sched­uled to die at 10 a.m. local time on November 13. According to jour­nal­ist Hilary Andersson , who trav­eled to Oklahoma to observe the exe­cu­tion, the call from the gov­er­nor came at 9:59 a.m. Mr. Wood learned that his life would be spared at the lit­er­al ​“last minute.” While Mr. Wood, his attor­neys, and his fam­i­ly expe­ri­enced over­whelm­ing relief in the after­math of the clemen­cy grant, accord­ing to Ms. Andersson, some also expressed shock at the tim­ing of the deci­sion. Mr. Wood’s son Brendan, an active-duty Army sol­dier, had dri­ven 18 hours from Fort Bragg to say good­bye to his father. 

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.

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with John Bessler, Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Professor Bessler is the author of several books on the death penalty, including his 2023 book The Death Penalty’s Denial of Fundamental Human Rights: International Law, State Practice, and the Emerging Abolitionist Norm . In his most recent book, Professor Bessler argues that the death penalty should be classified as torture, which would prohibit its use under international law and treaties. 

A fellow inmate of Iranian rapper Saman Yassin has given harrowing details of a mock execution by hanging that the artist was subjected to in Tehran’s Evin prison. Yassin was a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic before his arrest 14 months ago and supported the anti-government protests that swept the country last year.  In September, he was transferred from Evin to Ghezalhesar prison in Karaj, near the capital.

A hundred days after they began, the longest running anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution have shaken the regime, but at a heavy cost to the people. More than 500 protesters, including 69 children, have been killed, according to the Human Rights Activists' News Agency (HRANA). Two protesters have been executed and at least 26 others face the same fate, after what Amnesty International calls "sham trials".

A random encounter led a photographer to document murderers once on Iran’s death row, where inmates can be reprieved, often at the gallows, but only if they can pay blood money A thick, crisp layer of snow covered everything in sight. A sheet of white, broken only by a sludge-smeared 2-lane road that cut through the landscape like a knife parting a wedding cake. Enayat Asadi was miles from the nearest town; the photographer had not seen another soul for hours. He had spent nearly a year travelling the hinterland, across deserts and mountains to remote villages and isolated communities. He was working on a personal project called ranj (suffering), chronicling the hardships and misfortunes of those hidden from view. Now he was in the south of the country, a few hours west of Isfahan, where the ruined forts scattered the earth and where the winter froze rivers and waterfalls to a silvery crust. Asadi was not surprised when an old Paykan car going past stopped. A person walking in the cold...

In April, a jury found El Shafee Elsheikh guilty on four counts of hostage-taking and four counts of conspiracy after a two-week trial. ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge on Friday sentenced a key member of an Islamic State cell known as the Beatles to eight concurrent life terms without parole in the abduction, abuse and deaths of four Americans in Syria, ending a wrenching effort by their families to bring the militants to justice. In April, a jury found El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, guilty on four counts of hostage-taking and four counts of conspiracy after a two-week trial. Former captives detailed relentless beatings, sexual abuse, waterboarding and killings by three young Britons, who were nicknamed the Beatles for their accents and their incessant banter. The relatives of the four Americans — the journalists James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff as well as the aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig — watched intently, linking arms and grasping hands, as Judge Thomas S. Ellis III of Fed...

Last Sunday, at least 3 inmates were executed in just 1 prison in Iran. 4 others in that same facility, Urmia Prison, were transferred to solitary confinement at the same time, which indicates that they are at imminent risk of being hanged, as well.  In recent months, these stories of actual and threatened mass execution have been a near daily occurrence. More than 30 individuals were executed in the first month of 2021 alone, putting the country on course to exceed last year’s total of 267 killings.

Just a day after Christmas, the Iranian regime raised its 2020’s death penalty’s record to 254 cases with four new executions, including three Iranian Baluchi prisoners. On December 26, Iranian authorities executed at least four prisoners, according to the human rights association No to Prison – No to Execution . The sentences were carried out in Zahedan Central Prison, southeastern Iran, and Qom Central Prison, southwest of Tehran. Meanwhile, in Zahedan, prison guards took 43-year-old Yasin Abdollahi to the gallows. However, they refused to execute him at the last moment. Notably, Iranian authorities frequently use mock executions to break prisoners’ spirits. Since the beginning of 2020, the Iranian regime has executed at least 254 inmates, including 16 women and eight juvenile offenders, according to human rights groups. Baluchi Political Prisoner Abdolhamid Mir-Baluchzehi Mostafa Neili, lawyer for political prisoner Abdolhamid Mir-Baluchzehi, announced that the authorities hanged th...

A recent report from a social worker in Iran has shed more light on the abysmal conditions inside Iranian jails. The shocking report by Mr. Ali Mohammadzadeh who aids victims of addiction in prisons reveals new dimensions of the crimes committed years against inmates in the clerical regime’s dungeons, especially against death-row prisoners. Horror verdicts The report received Iran Human Rights Monitor sheds light on conditions inside Iranian jails and reveals the clerical regime’s methods to terrorize prisoners. According to Mr. Mohammadzadeh, prison authorities implement a sentence called the “horror verdict” in a bid to terrorize prisoners and prevent likely riots inside prisons. The horror verdict is carried out in this way: They take the death-row prisoner to solitary confinement, ostensibly to carry out his sentence. Sometimes, they keep the detainee for two or three days. Then they returned him to the ward. Some prisoners are even taken to the gallows and returned. This is one of...

Six years ago this month, the Islamic State (IS) published its first video in what would become the prevailing image of the war: a jumpsuit-clad hostage kneeling before a knife-wielding executioner. For the parents of slain Americans James Foley , Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, justice has remained elusive. But two of the families told Al-Monitor they were given fresh hope after a phone call with Attorney General William Barr on Aug. 6. Barr told them federal prosecutors will take the death penalty off the table as a potential sentence for two men alleged to have tortured and killed foreign hostages. News of the call was first reported by NBC News. This decision would make it possible for the United Kingdom, the suspects’ home country, to share evidence that could be key to putting El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey behind bars in the United States. If the British government doesn't provide its evidence within six weeks, Barr told the families that Ko...

Four decades of the clerical regime’s rule in Iran has left thousands of victims through widespread practice of torture and ill-treatment with impunity. Torture has been institutionalized in the regime’s punishment laws and is sanctioned by the Judiciary as well as the regime officials. Hadi Sadeghi, Deputy Chancellor of the Judiciary was quoted by the state-run ISNA news agency on May 30, 2018, as saying, “There is no precepts of imprisonment in Islam, so we need to seek alternative punishments. Physical punishment is much more effective than imprisonment, and the punishment of flogging is much more effective in Islam. But, the human rights agencies do not have a good idea on this matter.” The state-run Fars news agency cited Judiciary spokesperson Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, on January 17, 2018 as stressing on cross amputation for offenders where their opposite hand and foot are amputated. “Other punishments we have in mind for those who create insecurity in the ...