Mohammadreza Majidi Asl, Bita Hemmati, Behrouz Zamani-Nejad, and Kourosh Zamani-Nejad, who had been arrested on January 9 on protest-related charges, were sentenced to death on charges of carrying out operational actions for Israel or hostile governments. A fifth defendant in the same case was also sentenced to five years and eight months in prison.
On the evening of Monday, April 13, that Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Iman Afshari, in addition to the death sentences, sentenced the four main defendants in this case to five years in prison and confiscation of all property on charges of assembly and collusion against national security.
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The examples of charges listed in the court ruling include participation in protest gatherings on January 8 and 9, chanting protest slogans, throwing objects such as bottles, cement blocks, and incendiary materials from building rooftops, and destruction of public property.
The ruling also claims that these actions were carried out with the aim of disrupting national security and in connection with hostile groups.
Afshari in another section of his ruling referred to the use of explosive materials and an unspecified weapon, injury to forces stationed at the scene, and sending content with the aim of weakening security.
According to the text of the ruling, the details of these claims and the precise attribution of each charge to each defendant were not presented separately and transparently.
Mohammadreza Majidi Asl, 34, a mobile phone repair technician, was violently arrested on Friday, January 9, in the Republic Street area of Tehran by forces of the IRGC Intelligence Organization.
According to informed sources, the arrest of this citizen was accompanied by beatings, and after being transferred to detention he was placed under pressure and tortured to extract a confession.
According to an informed source close to the families of these prisoners, Mohammadreza Majidi Asl and Bita Hemmati are a couple living in Tehran, and Amir Hemmati is also a relative of the two. Kourosh and Behrouz Zamani-Nejad also lived in the same residential building and were arrested simultaneously.
The defendants were under pressure during interrogation to make forced confessions against themselves.
Hours before this news was announced, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the head of the judiciary of Iran’s regime, declared that in handling political cases related to the war and recent developments, this institution will maintain a wartime and jihadist posture until further notice, and that courts will decide on what he called spies, traitorous elements, and the foot soldiers of the invading enemy based on the requirements of wartime conditions.
In Iran’s current legal system, wartime conditions are not explicitly defined in law, and in the field of criminal law there is also no provision under which criminal procedure changes during wartime or grants special and additional powers to the judiciary.
In the law passed in October last year under the title “Intensification of Punishment for Espionage,” Article 6 explicitly states that if the crimes covered by this law occur under wartime conditions, the individual’s punishment is increased by up to three degrees.
Iran’s regime has in recent weeks increased the pace of carrying out death sentences and intensified the repression of citizens by citing special wartime conditions.
Ali Fahim was executed on April 6, Mohammadamin Biglari and Shahin Vahedparast on April 5, Amirhossein Hatami on April 2, 2026, and Saleh Mohammadi, Mehdi Ghasemi, and Saeed Davoudi on March 19.
All of these individuals had been arrested during the nationwide protests in January.
Iran’s regime had previously also executed Abolhassan Montazer and Vahid Bani-Amerian on April 4, 2026, Pouya Ghabadi Bistouni and Babak Alipour on March 31, and Akbar Daneshvarkar and Mohammad Taghavi Sangdehi on March 30, on charges of membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and armed rebellion.
On March 18, 2025, the death sentence of Kourosh Keyvani, an Iranian-Swedish dual national citizen, was also carried out on charges of “espionage” for Israel.
