The addition of Mondays to the execution schedule at Ghezel Hesar prison is yet another sign of the regime’s instrumental use of executions to instill fear, cover up regional crises, and suppress the impoverished and protesting population.
As public opinion and human rights organizations continue to warn about the intensifying wave of executions in Iran, Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj has once again come under scrutiny.
According to reports received, in addition to Wednesdays—previously the customary execution day—Mondays have now been officially added to the prison’s execution calendar.
This change signals both an acceleration in the regime’s machinery of repression to physically eliminate convicts, and a deliberate strategy by the ruling dictatorship to use executions as a tool of intimidation and social control.
In recent days, a number of prisoners have been moved from general wards to solitary confinement cells known as “suites.”
One of these prisoners, Vahid Amiri Ghahi, born in 1988 and sentenced to death in a drug-related case, was transferred on Saturday to solitary confinement in Unit 1 of Ghezel Hesar prison for the imminent implementation of his sentence. He has been held in this prison since 2019.
Execution: Not Justice, but a Policy of Death
The surge in executions is occurring amid a peak in poverty, unemployment, inflation, and widespread social discontent in the country.
Most of those sentenced to death are direct victims of the regime’s plundering economic policies and systemic dysfunction.
Many of them, like Vahid Amiri, were driven by poverty and social inequality into paths that ultimately led to heavy and fatal sentences.
Meanwhile, the true architects of poverty and economic ruin remain safely in power, continuing to plunder the country’s resources with impunity.
An Alternative Tool for Regional Failures
As international pressure mounts and the Iranian regime suffers increasing regional setbacks—especially in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon—the wave of executions has clearly taken on a political function.
Through mass executions, the Iranian regime seeks to contain its legitimacy crisis and widespread domestic discontent by creating an atmosphere of fear, aiming to prevent any potential uprisings.
This policy is reminiscent of past periods when the regime, gripped by fear of social explosion, resorted to preemptive massacres.
The Urgent Need to Expand the “No to Executions Tuesdays” Campaign
In response to the catastrophic rise in executions, the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign is expanding rapidly.
Prisoners, families, civil society activists, and international organizations have turned this campaign into a tool of resistance against the regime’s death policy.
This campaign is not only a symbol of protest but a voice for the lives condemned to death in the silence of prison cells.
The “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign has been ongoing for more than 70 weeks, with political prisoners going on hunger strike every Tuesday in protest against death sentences.
The rise in executions at Ghezel Hesar prison underscores the urgent need to strengthen this campaign more than ever.
Every Tuesday, the cry of “No” to the dictatorship’s killing machine is the echo of human conscience that refuses to witness state-sanctioned killings disguised as “law enforcement.”
In reality, what is carried out in prisons under the name of justice not only lacks legal legitimacy under international law but also constitutes part of the physical elimination of the poor and the dissenters under the guise of domestic legislation.
This blatant violation of fundamental human rights is a compelling reason to demand an immediate halt to executions and international scrutiny of Iran’s judicial system and prison conditions.
