Death Penalty News

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

2,707 executions worldwide in 2025, a record for over 40 years. Every year, Amnesty International releases a report detailing the use of the death penalty from the previous year. In this year’s report, there was a staggering rise in executions and death sentences, carried out by a handful of governments determined to rule by fear. Here, we provide the details on the main findings from the report, at a global and regional level.

At least 358 people have been executed in North Korea since Kim Jong-un came to power in late 2011, with executions surging sharply following the country’s Covid-19 border shutdown, according to a report released Tuesday by a Seoul-based nongovernmental organization. The Transitional Justice Working Group said in its latest study, “Mapping North Korea’s Executions Before and After the Covid-19 Pandemic,” that it documented 136 executions between Dec. 17, 2011, and Dec. 16, 2024, resulting in at least 358 deaths. Including cases where death sentences were issued but not confirmed as carried out, the total rises to 144 cases involving 367 individuals.

North Korea dramatically increased executions during the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly for consuming South Korean dramas, K-pop and other foreign culture and political offences, a report published Tuesday showed.  Pyongyang closed its borders in January 2020 to stop the spread of the coronavirus, with research and media reports indicating that the diplomatically isolated nation spent subsequent years bolstering security along its frontiers.  Campaigners have said the shutdown worsened longstanding human rights abuses in North Korea, whose government is widely seen as one of the world's most repressive.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 12 February 2026: Saleh Mohammadi, a teenage protester and wrestler, has been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for the murder of a policeman during the 8 January protest in Qom. The court rejected Saleh’s testimony that his confessions were obtained under torture, and ordered for his execution to be carried out publicly at the scene of the alleged crime.  On 4 February, IHRNGO issued a warning that, given the authorities’ systematic use of lethal force, reliance on torture-tainted confessions, disregard for due process and history of hasty and secret executions, detainees faced an escalating risk of mass death sentences, executions and extrajudicial killings.

People in North Korea, including schoolchildren, are being publicly executed, sent to labour camps or subjected to brutal public humiliation for watching South Korean television shows or listening to K-pop, according to new testimonies gathered by Amnesty International. North Koreans who fled the country told Amnesty that watching globally popular South Korean dramas – including Crash Landing on You, Descendants of the Sun and Squid Game – or listening to South Korean pop music can lead to the most extreme punishments, including death. Those without money or connections face the harshest consequences.

The Taliban said six people were executed during the 2025 calendar year under orders issued by the group’s leader, while at least 1,118 others were publicly flogged by Taliban courts across Afghanistan. Hamdullah Fitrat, the Taliban’s deputy spokesperson, said in a statement posted on X on Thursday that the executions were carried out in the provinces of Farah, Nimruz, Badghis and Khost after court rulings and approval by the Taliban leader. He said the punishments were imposed under the principle of retribution, or qisas .

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); December 23, 2025: Mahin Rashidi, Abbas Alami, Naser Faraji, Tohid Barzegar and Jamshid Amirfazli, five co-defendants on death row for drug-related offences, were secretly executed in a group hanging in Shiraz Central Prison.  According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, four men and a woman were hanged in Shiraz (Adel Abad) Central Prison on 17 December 2025. Their identities have been established as Mahin Rashidi, a 39-year-old woman, Abbas Alami, 43, Naser Faraji, 38, Tohid Barzegar, 51, and Jamshid Amirfazli, 45, all Kashan natives.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); December 4, 2025: At least 152 people were executed in November 2025, including five women, four Afghan nationals, an Iraqi national, seven Kurds, five Baluch and an Arab minority. IHRNGO has recorded 1,426 executions in the first eleven months of 2025, a 70% increase compared to the same period in 2024.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); December 3, 2025: Mahmoud Nouri, Hossein Shafizadeh and Gholamreza Bahrami, three men on death row for murder charges, were executed in Semnan Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, three men were hanged in Semnan Central Prison on 2 December 2025. Their identities have been established as  Mahmoud Nouri, a 40-year-old man from Semnan, 40-year-old Hossein Shafizadeh and Gholamreza Bahrami.

The Taliban governor’s spokesperson in Khost said on Tuesday that two sons of a man executed earlier that day have also been sentenced to death. Their executions, he said, have been postponed because the heir of the victims is not currently in Afghanistan. Mostaghfer Gurbaz, spokesperson for the Taliban governor in Khost, also released details of the charges against the man executed on Tuesday, identified as Mangal. He said Mangal was accused of killing members of a family.

The man had been convicted of killing 13 members of a family, including children, and was executed by one of their relatives, according to police. Afghanistan's Taliban authorities carried out the public execution of a man on Tuesday convicted of killing 13 members of a family, including several children, earlier this year. Tens of thousands of people attended the execution at a sports stadium in the eastern city of Khost, which the Supreme Court said was the eleventh since the Taliban seized power in 2021 in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of US and NATO forces.

Iran on Tuesday publicly executed a man after convicting him of raping two women in the northern province of Semnan. The execution was carried out in the town of Bastam after the Supreme Court upheld the verdict, the judiciary's official outlet Mizan Online reported. Mizan cited the head of the provincial judiciary, Mohammad Akbari, as saying the ruling had been 'confirmed and enforced after precise review by the Supreme Court'. The provincial authority said the man had 'deceived two women and committed rape by force and coercion', adding that he used 'intimidation and threats' to instil fear of reputational harm in the victims.

North Korea's citizens face death penalty by firing squads for failed escape attempts A North Korean interpreter reportedly defected to the South Korean Embassy in Ulaanbaatar during an official delegation visit to Mongolia in late August, marking a rare and significant blow to Kim Jong-un’s regime , according to diplomatic sources. The delegation was led by Tae Hyung-cheol, president of the Academy of Social Sciences, one of Pyongyang ’s leading policy institutes. The interpreter’s escape was kept secret for weeks before being confirmed by media outlets in Seoul . Officials in South Korea have declined to comment, citing security concerns. However, Kyodo News reported that Pyongyang has already ordered the replacement of its ambassador to Mongolia. It remains unclear whether the ambassador was directly involved in the incident, but sources say he is now under investigation.

Taliban Publicly Execute Man Convicted of Murder in Badghis  The Taliban on Thursday publicly executed a man convicted of murder in northwestern Afghanistan, marking the 11th such execution since the group’s return to power in 2021, according to the Taliban’s Supreme Court.  In a statement, the court said the man, identified as Ismail, was convicted of fatally shooting a man and a woman, Dost Mohammad and Gulbarga, in Jawand district of Badghis province.  The statement added that the verdict was upheld by three Taliban-run courts and reviewed by the group’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, before final approval. 

Defectors from the Pyongyang regime describe the growing repression and deterioration of human rights denounced by the UN Article 1 of North Korea ’s Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, passed in 2020, outlines why Pyongyang believes the legislation is necessary: The law “contributes to the strengthening of our sense of ideology, revolution, and social class by launching a powerful battle to obstruct the inflow and distribution of reactionary ideology and culture and anti-socialist ideology and culture.” Article 7 adds that strict punishments, including the death penalty, will be applied to any citizen “bringing in, viewing, and distributing reactionary ideology and culture, depending on the severity, regardless of the reason and the offender’s social class.”

One hundred people were executed in July, more than double the number of people executed in July of last year, according to the Office for the High Commissioner of Human Rights. More than 800 people have been executed in Iran since the start of the year, the UN said Friday, decrying "a systematic pattern of using the death penalty as a tool of state intimidation". The United Nations rights office said there had been a "major increase in executions during the first half of 2025".

At least 160 people were executed in Iran over the past month, according to a report by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which warned that the pace of executions in the country is accelerating. HRANA said the executions took place during the Iranian month of Mordad (July 23 to Aug. 22), averaging one every five hours. It also documented 16 new death sentences and four confirmations of capital punishment, including that of jailed labor activist Sharifeh Mohammadi. Three executions were carried out in public.

Judiciary says man was put to death at scene of triple murder he committed last year in the city of Kordkuy, as Tehran continues wave of capital punishments. Iran publicly hanged a convicted murderer at the scene of his alleged crime on Thursday, the judiciary said, just two days after another public execution. Most executions in Iran are carried out inside prisons. Public executions are generally reserved for offenses that caused particular outrage.