Political executions surge in Iran since start of war

The line is crisp. But Mehrab Abdollahzadeh’s voice is clear and, given the circumstances, surprisingly firm.

He is on death row in western Iran. He speaks quickly, as if time is running out. And his message is desperate.

“You hear my voice from Oromiyeh Central Prison, and this may be the last time you hear it,” he said in a voice note obtained by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network.

“From the first day of my arrest, they forced me to make confessions under torture and threat, confessions that were entirely false. None of the accusations against me are true. They know it, and God knows it. I am innocent.”

Mehrab was arrested in 2022, during nationwide protests that followed the death in police custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for not wearing her veil properly. He was accused of being involved in the assassination of a member of the Iranian Basij militia.

After 42 months of fear and sleepless nights, he was executed earlier this month, part of a surge in executions of people for political and security reasons.

Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, the UN says it has verified the execution of at least 32 political prisoners.

This is a sharp increase year-on-year, with 45 politically motivated executions in all of 2025, according to Amnesty International.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned that the death penalty is increasingly being used to silence political dissent.

Several of those killed this year were accused of spying for Israel or the CIA, while others were accused of being affiliated with an exiled opposition group. Fourteen of them were arrested in connection with the uprising in January this year, which was suppressed with deadly force, leading to thousands of deaths.

“In Iran, the authorities carry out executions by hanging. They do it at dawn,” explains Nassim Papayianni of Amnesty International. “Iranians wake up to almost daily announcements of executions.”

“They use the death penalty as a weapon of political repression, to sow fear among the population and, essentially, to crush and stifle all dissent. »

Although some executions are announced publicly, a spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights told the BBC he feared others would take place in secret.

Last year, Iran carried out 2,159 executions, according to Amnesty International – the highest number since 1989. The vast majority of them were linked to drug offenses or murder.

The UN fears this figure will be even higher this year.

By increasingly resorting to the death penalty, the regime is trying to restore its authority after its image was tarnished by the January uprising and the war, according to Kaveh Kermanshahi of the Kurdistan Human Rights Network.

“At a time when he is faced with multiple internal and external crises, he is trying, through intensified repression and an increase in executions, to stage a demonstration of power and project the message: ‘I am still here and I am still in control,'” he said.

Late last month, state television broadcast a report on the execution of Sasan Azadvar, a 21-year-old karate champion from the central city of Isfahan. He was found guilty of “moharabeh” or “war against God” and “effective collaboration with the enemy” for attacking police forces during the January protests. He is seen admitting to using a stick to break the window of a police car and asking for gasoline to set it on fire.

But he has not been charged with any deadly offenses, which is, under international law, the legal threshold for the use of the death penalty.

Iranian authorities did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment on their increasing use of the death penalty, notably against Sardar Azadvar, and on allegations of torture.

But on April 30, Iran’s judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, rejected international criticism of death sentences linked to January’s unrest, saying his courts would not be swayed.

Each of the convicts has their own story. But human rights advocates speak of worrying trends. The death penalty is used disproportionately against members of the country’s minorities.

Erfan Shakourzadeh, 29, a master’s student in aerospace engineering, was hanged on May 11. Iranian courts said he was found guilty of sharing classified information with Israeli and American intelligence services.

But the Norway-based human rights organization Hengaw published a note he allegedly wrote before his death.

“I was arrested on trumped-up espionage charges and, after eight and a half months of torture and solitary confinement, I was forced to make a false confession. Don’t let another innocent life be taken in silence.”

Hengaw said he was deeply concerned by the speed with which trials, convictions and executions were taking place, as well as “a complete lack of transparency” in legal proceedings.

“The Islamic Republic continues its systematic repression of the population by arbitrarily accusing dissidents and critics of being ‘Israeli spies’ without presenting credible evidence or ensuring fair trial standards,” the group’s Aywar Shekhi told the BBC, adding that “many lives are in danger.”

In his voice message from prison before his execution, Mehrab Abdollahzadeh described the torment of being on death row.

“A condemned person thinks every day and night that he could be called and taken away for execution at any time. A condemned person can only find some peace after 1 a.m., perhaps abandoning his racing thoughts to sleep for two or three hours,” he said.

The 29-year-old Kurdish trader was executed – according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network – without prior warning to his relatives or lawyers, and his body was not returned to his family.