Reports from human rights sources indicate that from Tuesday, April 8 to Wednesday, April 9, at least 16 prisoners—including five political prisoners and three women—were executed in prisons across Iran.
According to the human rights website HRANA, these individuals were hanged in various prisons across Iran, including in the cities of Gonabad, Mashhad, Karaj, and Shahroud.
Among those executed on April 9, at least four were hanged in Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, one in Shahroud prison, and one in Gonabad prison.
The prisoners executed in Gonabad and Shahroud were sentenced to death for drug-related charges, while the four executed in Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj were convicted of murder.
Additionally, on April 8, at least ten prisoners, including five political prisoners and three women, were hanged in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad.
Execution of 1,050 People and Crackdown on 30,000 Women for Not Wearing the Hijab
According to HRANA, four of these prisoners, including two women, had previously been sentenced to death for drug-related offenses. Another female prisoner was executed for murder.
Earlier on April 8, HRANA reported the execution of five political and ideological prisoners in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad, stating that the sentences were carried out without prior notice and without giving the prisoners a chance for a final meeting with their families.
Farhad Shakeri, Abdolhakim Azim Gorgij, Abdolrahman Gorgij, Taj Mohammad Khormali, and Malek-Ali Fadaei-Nasab are the five political prisoners who were executed at dawn on April 8 in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad. They had been convicted of “rebellion against the Islamic ruler through membership in the National Solidarity Front of Sunni Iranians.”
Isa Eid Mohammadi, another defendant sentenced to death in the same case, remains in Ward 6/1 of Vakilabad prison in Mashhad and is at risk of execution.
The death sentences of Hamid Rastbala, Kabir Saadat Jahani, and Mohammad Ali Arayesh, three other defendants in this case, had already been carried out in January 2021.
In recent months, the rising number of executions and the issuance and confirmation of death sentences for political prisoners in Iran have sparked waves of protest both inside and outside the country.
In one of the latest examples, the “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign issued a statement on April 8 warning of the increasing risk of executions and called on the international community to condition any relations with Iran’s regime on the complete abolition of the death penalty in the country.
On the same day, a group of family members of political prisoners sentenced to death gathered in front of Evin Prison in Tehran, holding photos of the condemned prisoners and placards with slogans such as “No to Execution” and “Immediate Repeal of Death Sentences.”
In its annual report on capital punishment released early on April 8, Amnesty International announced that the regime in Iran was responsible for 972 executions in 2024, accounting for over 64 percent of all recorded executions globally.
